Another One Rides the Bus

Please tell me you get the reference in the title?
Or don't.
I guess it really doesn't matter.

On Tuesday the 30th we went to John's Incredible Pizza in Beaverton.
I'm trying to think of even one thing about the trip that wasn't a huge pain in the ass, but I can't.

We went to the school to pick up the other group that we always share a bus with.
As we pulled up, my phone rang. It was the office, wanting to know how many passengers our bus would hold. Seems the other bus driver they'd asked to drive for the day couldn't make it and another program was going to need a ride.

A complicated proposal, even though we had a 78 passenger bus. We wouldn't have had enough room for all the adults to ride, too, but had to have enough adults to be in correct ratio with kids.

Several staff people had to ride in Clarion's car. I'm calling her Clarion because godDAMN that woman is loud.
Strident.
It's not that she isn't nice, but man, she rubs me the wrong way sometimes.

Four staff and Clarion took off in her vehicle and the rest of us stayed on the bus.

We went to the other school and picked up the kids there.
What followed was the NOISIEST bus ride I've ever been on. The kids yelled, sang the alphabet song loudly and off-key about six times until one of the adults in the back of the bus finally told them to stop. I was surprised that someone actually did something, really. The staff people who were on the bus were the same as most of the newer staff I've met this summer... they were clueless.

Also clueless? Our bus driver. She didn't know where we were going. We passed the pizza place three times. Well, a block away three times. Took a grand detour and waited in a construction zone, ended up going the wrong way so made a friggin' 3 point turn in the middle of the road. Twice. The second time I was focused on keeping the little boy in the seat ahead of mine from barfing. I'm still not sure if he really was going to throw up or was following the example of the kid in the back of the bus who actually DID toss his cookies somewhere along the way.

So I was busy with little upChuck and didn't see the signs in the median that the bus took out. I did hear a couple or ten kids and a couple adults in the back of the bus saying, "OH MY GOD she HIT THOSE SIGNS!"

I heard that last year she hit a truck and a car on one of the narrow streets the bus was forced to travel down, and didn't stop. Not sure what action, if any, was taken.

She's kind of a scary bus driver.

Here's an example.
You know how you're zoomin' down the street and about three blocks away, you see the stop light go yellow? You know it's going to be red when you get there, right? Cars ahead of you are slowing and stopping, so you take your foot off the gas and begin to slow down before you get there.

She just...  doesn't.
She must see the traffic ahead slowing down, but she doesn't slow down until she's almost on them, then she slams on the brakes. Kids have actually fallen off the seats!
It's not just once or twice, it's multiple times on each trip.

She also speeds. You know the little blinky signs that tell you the speed limit and in digital letters below, tell you how fast you're going? I saw those signs. She was always at least 5 and more often 10 mph too fast. What the hell?

So she drives too fast, slams on the brakes, gets lost.
On a personal level she was very nice to everyone.
But she did make me nervous. The good thing was that we were in a bus. So if she had ended up hitting a car or even a small truck most of us would probably have survived.

We were 40 minutes late to the pizza place. The game cards they gave to the kids were only good until 1, so when they got in line (and let me pause here to tell you that ANOTHER group from our company was told to 'hurry' and the adults with them figured that meant they could cut in front of MY group... and yes, I did say something. To MY kids. Loudly. "I'm sorry you guys, I don't know why this other group thinks it's okay to cut in line ahead of you. It really surprises me, actually, since that's not very nice, is it?")  to claim prizes, the cards shut down and most of my group didn't even get a prize. It doesn't matter that they were cheap and stupid little carnival crap, either. The kids were really disappointed.

Disappointed? Three of them were crying. Yeah, they're cheesy prizes and don't matter, would probably be broken and forgotten in a matter of days, but that wasn't the point, now was it?

So I assured them that, "I know we got ripped off you guys... I'll fix it, though. I will get you a prize myself."

And Amazon got another $20 from me, I ordered some little LEGO knockoff vehicles. They were here the next afternoon.  Those little cars brought my kids a lot of smiles. Well worth the small price.

When it was time to leave, Clarion decided to take charge. There were three buses of kids that day. Ours had three groups, the others, two.

We knew which driver was ours. So it was entirely unnecessary for Clarion to position herself in front of our little group in the lobby, point at the bus out front and inform me, "That's not your bus!" as it pulled up.

I smiled. Told her, "Why THANK YOU, Clarion! But you know, I looked in the bus and saw a complete stranger behind the wheel and said to myself, Self... that's not your bus. Thanks, but I think we have this handled."

She wandered off to tell the other groups whose bus it wasn't that it wasn't their bus, either. God.

It  didn't help my attitude when she got on our bus and confiscated the clipboards with the rosters from the other two groups so SHE could take roll.

This was a process that involved her standing next to MY seat and shouting out the names of 63 kids. My own group was small enough that I told her,  "They're accounted for, thank you."

I put my fingers in my ears and looked out the window as she bellowed. And bellowed. Some of the kids (okay, the older boys) think it's funny to say almost anything besides 'here' when their names are called. So we waited even longer while a couple or six of them shouted out phrases, made rude noises or screeeeeeched and all their little friends laughed so loud that Clarion had to bray over the top of it and get everyone to settle down again so she could scream out more names.

When she was finished howling, she said, "Sorry it was so loud." to me.

I told her I understood why she had to be loud. And I didn't even ask her why she had to do it next to my head.

Three and a half more weeks.