masthead #47 – school bus
Man, I hated riding the school bus. HATED it. Coupled with my motion sickness, inhaling the stench of diesel fumes every afternoon for an hour (my brother and I were one of the last kids off) ensured that every time I got home, I’d spend a few minutes violently dry heaving next to the mailbox.
We lived on top of a hill, so we had the advantage of seeing our bus turn at an intersection a mile away and know that we had about 10 minutes until it got to our house (our route was the most convoluted thing I’ve ever seen; whoever coordinated it must’ve been a sadistic drunk). My brother and I took turns watching for that bus at the living room window every single morning. Conveniently, our vantage point meant we were staring directly into the sun, so during the winter, there were many times where I thought I saw the bus, but I wasn’t 100% sure because I was completely snow blind. As a result, and due to my paranoid fear that we would miss the bus, my brother and I spent many winter mornings at the end of our long driveway, stamping our feet in frozen frustration while I alternately cursed our bus driver and cried over my frostbitten ears because I thought wearing a stocking cap would muss my mullet.
Our bus was always overpopulated, a 3-kids-to-a-seat, band-instruments-stuffed-everywhere plight I assumed affected everyone, until I rode my friend’s bus one day and saw maybe 10 kids, each enjoying their own expansive seat acreage. Confused, I asked her, “Where is everybody?” She looked back at me, equally confused, and responded, “What do you mean? This is everybody.”
The next day I marched up to our bus driver, a sullen woman with a too-tight perm and a permanent scowl who probably enjoyed foisting those stale popcorn balls on us every Halloween, pointed at the maximum capacity sign that said “68 occupants,” and angrily asserted that there were at least 80 of us on the bus, and that was ridiculous. For my Norma Rae-esque efforts I got yelled at to sit down, and on my huffy way back to my seat (an overturned garbage can that some of the boys had thoughtfully turned into a bench seat for me by covering it with a two by four) I hollered, “I’d love to sit down, only THERE IS NOWHERE TO DO THAT BECAUSE THIS BUS SUCKS!”
What’s your least-favorite memory of riding the school bus?
