One year I was between jobs, because of a move. I worked as a special needs school bus van driver in Bedford NH. The school bus van is much smaller than a full size school bus. ‘Special needs’ usually means besides transporting special needs students, it will also have a wheelchair lift.
I ran a very tight van schedule all day. My run began early at 5:45 a.m. I had five male Jr. high school students to pick up at their homes and transport to a school for dyslexic children in Littleton MA.
After dropping the boys off at their school, I drove back to Bedford to do a second run picking up special needs children from their homes for each of the three Bedford elementary schools. Two of my passengers were wheelchair bound.
After dropping off my special needs students, I was finished and could go home until the afternoon schedule began. This worked out well with my children. My oldest was in college. The two youngest were in high school.
In the afternoon, I drove back to Littleton to pick up the Jr. high boys and transport them home again. Then I picked up the younger special needs students from each of the three elementary schools to transport home again.
There was one crazy afternoon … I was almost back to Bedford on the highway with my dyslexic boys from Littleton MA when I found myself behind one of the full-size school busses from a neighboring town.
There in the back window of the Emergency Exit door, for all the world to see, a girl had dropped her pink underwear down around her ankles and she was mooning my van! The students around her were obviously cheering her on.
What in the hell? Isn’t the driver aware of what is going on? Oh dear, I hope my Jr. high boys on board are either sleeping, or reading and doing their homework!
OH CRAP … No Such Luck … the boys were cheering.
I called our bus terminal on the radio and reported the problem. Then I sped up enough to go around the big bus on its left. When I was parallel to the driver’s window, I saw it was a woman driver. When she looked over and down at me, her expression was blank.
I made a “look” gesture with my index finger and the next in a “V” shape, pointing at my eyes. Then I made a fast swiping motion towards the back of her bus. I only had to do it twice before she figured out I wanted her to see what was going on in the back of her bus.
I have no idea how it all went down, but the boys on my bus talked about it for weeks …