The year starts....

A week ago, this Monday, was the annual school bus safety meeting that we all have to go to each year. It’s where they tell us to not die plzkthx. Anyhow, the day was fairly uneventful overall despite my expectation of drama to erupt. We started at 9 am, which was surprising for those of us remember last year’s fiasco. Last year during our meeting day, they had folks from a local bank come in and give a speech about their promotions. The speech lasted about 2 hours and ended up including some “crowd rousing” cheering and other gimmicks that got annoying after the first 10 minutes of the presentation. All in all it was a complete waste of time and only succeeded in making us all really pissed off.

This year’s meeting actually started on time and lasted till lunchtime. Most of the meeting was focused on the guest speaker. He did his part in 2 hours time. The remaining hour of the morning, from 9-12, was dedicated to policy changes, memos and other FYI sort of items. Yay – only not.

Anyhow, the first two days went well. They were a little hectic and outside of a few crying children, there were no major problems to speak of. Saturday had me going on an all day field trip to a Softball tournament. That was pretty mild, though it made for a long day leaving town at 7:30 am and getting back around 9:30 pm. All in all pretty good.

This morning, however, was when the real trouble started. I picked up a key to a bus from the shop, drove the school system van to the next town over (about 10 minutes drive) and went to the bus on the school lot. Opened the door fine, unlocked the back door fine, put the key into the ignition and tried to turn it – NOT fine. Jiggle the key a little bit, try to turn the key – nope not that. Run back to the back of the bus and double check the back door slide lock, return and try to turn the key again – nope not that. At this point, I was supposed to have left the schoolyard by that time – 6:10 am. Frantic call to the actual bus driver of the bus I was subbing on – her son was due to have surgery this morning. She came over to the yard and tried the things I did, in the order I did. We decided the key was defective and she gave me her key. Whee – 5 minutes late. I hightailed it out of the yard and miraculously made it to the first stop exactly 2 minutes late. I made up the rest of the time on the route and actually had time to wait about 10 minutes at the school. I guess that was my hitch for today!

Having a great School year so far!!
The Bus Driver