We had to ride the bus to Payson most days and which
meant that we had to get up pretty early and get ready and then go
stand in the dark and cold until the bus rolled up. That was the easy
part of the trip, when I was in junior high our bus driver was not
cut out for work with children. He was constantly on edge and that is
no way to deal with children. Kids are like vicious wolves and if
they scent blood you are in a world of hurt. They have nothing to do
all day and when they see they got a funny or dramatic response from
a adult in authority and not get in trouble they will do it again and
again until someone has to intervene or just kill all the kids. Our
bus driver had a hard route full of hard kids who were biding their
time until they were sixteen and legally allowed to drop out of
school. They were the types that had weapons and lighters and used
them. One kid was melting and cutting up the back seats which the bus
driver told us one day came out of his pay to repair. The oldest and
most sacred rule of bus ridership is that hard kids sit to the back
furthest from the watchful eyes of the driver. No normal kid would
dare to challenge the seating order because we liked to not be
punched and a kid with a knife might even put your guts on the wrong
side of your body. This bus driver thought that he could mess with
the ecosystem of the bus without causing an environmental break down.
He started placing good kids at the back of the bus and making the
hellions sit in the first two rows. The poor nerds who got put to the
back where caught smack in the middle of their two worst fears, the
fear of disobeying or disappointing an adult and the fear of bullies.
What was a good nerd to do? The tough kids were also caught in a
double bind of having to sit at the front and obey. What was a good
bully to do? After two days the levy broke and the bullies revolted
in mass and just went to sit where nature intended and they kicked
the nerd out of the seats they never wanted to begin with. The bus
driver stopped the bus a couple of blocks from the school and tried
to control the situation but when it spiraled badly out of control he
had to call the cops to come and arrest the bullies and take them
away. We were late getting home but it was worth it for the story of
the cops on the bus. The police action cooled the situation down for
a few weeks but after the initial shock wore off the bad kids started
to raise hell again. One day on the way home smoke started to fill
the bus and the bus driver pushed to the edge for the last time took
more drastic action. There was a deep ravine about a mile from the
school and when the driver scented the smoke he told us he was
pulling the bus right the fetch over right fetching then but he
wasn't saying fetch. What was more troubling then his use of the
'eff' word, in my opinion, was that he was looking backwards in the
big student watching mirror and not watching where he was going. He
pulled off the road into the soft gravel shoulder without slowing
down first and we were only a few hundred feet from the ravine when
he realized his mistake and fought to control the bus to a stop. We
finally skidded to a stop about thirty feet from the edge of the
slope down into the dry riverbed. We were all quite relived to have
not died and I think the bus driver no more so than us and he must
have decided this was not the job for him, he told us to sit tight
and that help would come soon. He called the dispatcher and then
opened the door walked out of the bus and walked away. We sat in
stunned science fro a little bit and then started talking about what
happened. A new driver showed up in about twenty minutes and we were
home safe soon. Our replacement driver was a no nonsense 50ish woman
with nothing but hate in her heart and a very calm bus. I never heard
anything about the driver again.
