Six Weeks To Go

Things get crazy this time of year, work and weather-wise, that is. On Friday we had an outbreak of severe weather. All the schools systems in the area let out. Everyone except ours. I kept watching the tv and making sure my radio and cell phone were on, waiting for the call that never came.

It was windy but hadn't started raining when we pulled away from the school. At the second stop, the tornado siren went off. Then the rain and lightning started. Great. I had no way of knowing whether the tornado was in the western part of the county or around the block from me. I kept having visions of the movie Twister where the cows and the school bus are sucked up and slung around. All I could do was drop the kids off as close their houses as possible without going off-route. It meant stopping at a couple of places where I don't normally stop, which I'm not supposed to do, but some of those kids have to walk quite a ways and I was afraid of the lightning.

Spring break is over and all the kids want to do is get out of school for the summer. We have one holiday in April, on the 22nd. The kids are out but we have to go in for four hours of "professional development" time. The budget for our department is so tight I don't know what they're going to come up with for that four hours.

I'm with the kids, though. As of Tuesday, there are twenty-nine days of school left. I have to start getting my bus cleaned up for the end of the year inspection. Not an easy task with forty middle schoolers riding it twice a day!

Last week the sixth graders had to stay on the bus one morning and pick up all the trash. This morning, it was the seventh graders. Eighth graders are too cool to leave trash in the back of the bus, or maybe they're just closer to the trash can. Either that, or they drop it in the sixth or seventh grade areas on their way off the bus.

Since Sunday is Easter, I've got some wrapped chocolate eggs to give out when the kids get off the bus. I just hope it's not so hot by then that they all melt in the wrapper. I could put them in a cooler and get one of the sixth grade girls to hand them out. Hope I don't get in trouble for giving a Muslim child a chocolate egg.

This Afternoon

I know it sounds odd, but I like my job driving a school bus. Except for days like today.

The sleet started falling about noon. I called the transportation office twice to see if they were going to let school out early. They told me to keep my radio on. Sigh.

I got to the bus early anyway and it's a good thing I did. I had no sooner started it, than my supervisor called to tell me they were letting school out early. Am I psychic or what?

There were wrecks everywhere. I don't know what it is that makes people want to go out and drive in ice and snow just for the heck of it. Traffic was horrible and our buses were banned from driving on the interstate. Just as well though. The few times I passed over or under the interstate, nobody was driving. They were all sitting still.

It usually takes me about twenty minutes to get to my first stop. Today it took an hour and fifteen minutes. It would have taken longer, but for my knowledge of the backroads and shortcuts. The Music Man calls me the Queen of the Obscure Backroads.

Only thirty-one rode the bus this afternoon. I guess the others were picked up by their parents. Hey, that's who all those people on the roads were: parents going to pick up their kids from school because they didn't trust the bus drivers to get them home safely.

I bet I got home before they did.