The School Bus - Every Man for Himself

So, yesterday I saw the story about the bus driver who yanked a six-year-old girl down by her backpack, bitched her out, and then smacked a couple of the other kids.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1362522/School-bus-driver-slams-girl-6-wont-sit-floor-caught-camera.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

And tonight on the local news I saw a story about a mom and two teens who boarded a school bus to beat up a 15 year old girl.

These incidents got me to thinking about my own bus-riding days, where I remember some of the high school girls being sexually groped underneath their clothes by some of the boys, a high school girl beat the shit out of a kid a year below me who used a racial epithet, and all kinds of general lawlessness and anarchy. It got me to thinking, is there anything more primal than being a kid on a school bus with kids of all type and age in a confined space with one adult who is not in any kind of position to keep the peace?

 

I only rode the bus in middle school and I was scared shitless of the driver. Mr. Hogue doubled as a math teacher. He served in Vietnam in the Marines. He kept his hair in a flat top, high and tight. He wore plain black horn-rimmed glasses and had hands the size of catcher's mitt.

He ran the bus (and his classroom) like a drill instructor. You didn't get out of your seat. You didn't yell. You didn't even chew gum.

 

Ha, that reminded me of the bus driver I had in elementary school. She was big and ugly. Her regular job was at the Dari Delite cooking dishing fingers. If we got too loud we'd hear that "NOOOOOOO TALKING!" and the whole bus sat in silence until we got off. Turned out she was actually a very nice lady.

Now, that was elementary school. I don't think that would have worked on the bus I rode in middle school where all the stuff described above went down.

worked at the Dari Delite

 

If it doesn't kill them it will only make them stronger, right?

 

And whatever you do, don't charge him more than 50 cents for a Coke.

 

Put another 25 pounds of muscle on Douglas you've got a close approximation.

 

Boy, the school bus riding does bring back some memories. Especially from middle school. One time a guy brought a gun on the bus. Somebody ratted him out (thankfully) when we actually got to school, and nobody ever heard from him again. There were fights, and other generally hateful things that only 12 year olds can do. I think 80 percent of us were pretty good at figuring out how to blend into the woodwork and simply observe. But anarchy isn't a bad word for it at all.

 

Great thread idea.

I remember going on a school trip once in middle school and we stopped at a place to eat that was like a fast food in a gas station/truck stop kind of deal, and one of my classmates shoplifted a Playboy from the rack in the C-store and the boys were all crowding around looking at it in the back of the bus.

 

As someone who grew up with severe motion sickness and had to endure over an hour worth of bus ride to and from school this thread brings back a lot of bad memories.

 

The oatmeal, as usual, does a great job with this idea: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/bus.

 

Never had a problem on the bus. But I always hated when we had bus evacuation practice, or whatever the hell it was. Last bus driver I had would just make us go out the back of the bus once, and that was it -- especially if it was freezing out.

And as long as you weren't unruly, the dude was cool.