Life Lessons from the School Bus

This is what you do: put somebody in a 40 ft-long, 33,000 lb steel box for several hours a day. Then, add your choice of a few dozen kids hyped up on candy after a party, a few drunken sorority girls, crying toddlers, fog, darkness, and swarming ants attracted to a forbidden pop-tart. Do this and what you will have either a recipe for disaster, or an average day on a school bus (except for the drunken sorority girls ? that was not normal!). Now, to the best of my recollection, I?ve met only one adult who said, ?I always wanted to be a school bus driver.? Most, like me, wound up taking the job out of desperation, because our spouses told us to, or because we were attracted to the crazy hours and summers off without pay. I?m convinced only a select few wake up one morning and exclaim, ?Hey! I want to drive a bus! It?ll be fun!? No, in my opinion, a sovereign God sets in motion a variety of calamitous circumstances to place drivers behind the wheels of school buses in order to teach us about life. The rest become transportation managers and dispatchers. Therefore, after nearly fifteen years behind the wheel, I?ve compiled a collection of mostly-true anecdotes, a few serious observations, and a wealth of wisdom you?d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else, unless you?ve driven a school bus. However, don?t feel you have to drive a bus, or even have a driver?s license, to enjoy this book. Even if you?ve been banned from the road, the following stories will give you a license to laugh. At the end of each story (names have been changed to protect the innocent ? especially me) you will find two things, each meant to make you do an ?emergency stop? (that?s bus lingo) in your brain. First, there will be something called a ?Life Lesson.? This is the part where I, the brilliant author, will attempt to sound as wise as Solomon by relating a bus-driving story to everyday life. The ?Life Lesson? will attempt to bring everything together in a flash of profundity, a moment in time when you will sit back and say, ?Wow!? You may even shed a tear. The second thing you will find is something I have decided to call ?Route Suggestions.? This is the part where I will leave you with some simple bullet-pointed suggestions designed to make your own bus route of life easier. Without them, you could run into dead end streets, make illegal stops, or find yourself out of fuel in the middle of nowhere with crying children wanting mommy and no way to radio for help. For heaven?s sake, don?t take these route suggestions lightly! By the time you finish this little book, my prayer is that you will have done at least two of the following: 1. Made plenty of notes. 2. Laughed and cried at least ten times. 3. Bought more copies to give to others ? because this one is now too special for you to loan or give away. 4. Been encouraged in one way or another. 5. Developed a closer relationship with the Giver of Life. Come and ride with me! As we traverse the flat, wide-open tobacco fields of Kentucky, to the foggy-mountain curves and narrow city streets of Tennessee, something is bound to stick to your window.