Fantasy of a Princess... To take your mind off the nightmare my children had.I'm not even sure how to start this post. Naming it wasn't so hard. But where do I start that doesn't drag you through the blah blah blah of another day in the life type thing? Oh well...
My kids attend a public school. They ride the bus to and from school to include my youngest, Mathew, who is 3-years-old. Yesterday our regular bus driver took a sick day as he has been fighting a nasty cough for weeks now. When the bus came yesterday morning it was a lady bus driver substitute. She was actually two minutes early. When I approached I reminded her that as a sub she was expected to be late, not early. Big smile... good laugh between us and a compliment slipped in sideways. :o)
Yesterday was Wednesday. My son, Elijah, and my daughter, Julia, participate in the school's track program. To do this I have to go and pick them up at 4:30pm. So I am outside, yesterday, at 4pm waiting for the bus. It usually arrives no later than 4:08pm. I know there is a sub so when it is a bit later than that I don't freak out. Then suddenly I hear the bus. I can tell from the sound of it that it is traveling at a high rate of speed for our neighborhood. And ZOOM!!! it flies by the house. I am in the yard frantically waving the bus down. The driver is not the woman but some man who had subbed for us last year. He is starring straight ahead and the children inside look frantic and confused.
As always happens at these crazy moments in my life, I am on the cell phone talking to my sister. My cell phone which is now being burned up by calls from my neighbor which I was not answering. I finally have to interrupt my sister so I can get off the phone and call my neighbor. I am thinking she may know something about what is going on with the bus. So I call her and she asks if the bus dropped my kids off. "Nope!" We hang up. Ten minutes goes by and I decide to call the school to let them know I am going to be late picking my children up. I decided to ask for the school bus depot so I can call them. As I hang up I hear the bus again. It still sounds like it is racing down the road and I step out a little further in my yard hoping the guy will see me. I am frantically waiving my arms. He is staring straight ahead. Whoosh and he is gone again.
I call my neighbor. This time she confesses that she isn't even home. Her 11-year-old son is home to get his two younger siblings off the bus and no, it still hasn't stopped. Now I am pretty ticked. This guy is racing through our neighborhood at break neck speeds and, from what I can tell, isn't letting kids off the bus. I get off the phone.
I am standing in my yard next to the dead Mimosa tree. I am breaking small branches off it. I am kicking some of the bigger branches off. It's been dead that long. I decide to call the bus depot. A very nice lady answers and I tell her that I have five kids on the bus and two still at school needing picked up. I tell her the bus has flown by here twice. Suddenly I am hearing the bus again. I can tell, by the sound, that he is once again flying down the road. I say out loud into the phone, "I AM THROWING THIS STICK OUT IN THE STREET TO GET HIM TO STOP!"
I throw a large stick and run forward. He has seen it and is looking at me like he wants to kill me. I am glaring right back at him as I motion for him to stop while I yell, "STOP!!! STOP!!!" And continue yelling that until he actually really does stop the bus. He was going so fast that the bus ended up stopping just past the front of my house.
I ran around to the now open door of the bus. The bus driver is still looking at me like he wants to throttle me. He suddenly notices he has a group of kids by him and begins yelling at them asking, "Why are you up here? Go back and sit down!"
"Those are my children. This is where they live. This is where they get off the bus!" My voice is stern as I am upset that he is being so ugly. The kids start to get off the bus and I tell them to wait. That the bus driver must cross their names off the list before they can get off. This is normal procedure on our buses.
"You threw a stick at my bus," the bus driver snarled at me.
"I threw the stick at the edge of the road. I needed to get your attention as you have passed me out here three time. Well... actually two times and this was going to be the third except I got your attention."
"What are all you kids doing. GO SIT DOWN!!"
"These are my kids. Look. You see this? This is my son Luke. He is crying! My children are special needs. You have my son crying here," I said comforting my son. He responded rudely again, saying something about trying to figure out the route.
I am not writing everything that was said but he was definitely being a real jerk. But I have to admit I did have some satisfaction knowing that his boss was listening to him. Three different times during our conversation I spoke to this lady at the bus garage that was just quietly taking in all that was happening and being said and asked her, "Are you hearing this?" The third time I said that to her she asked me to put him on the phone.
"It's for you," I said holding the phone out toward him. He rolled his eyes and went back to what he was doing. "It's the bus depot... er... garage," I said shaking the phone at him so he would take it. I watched a quick "Oh Great," look flash across his face, but he quickly returned to a furrowed brow and took the phone. He was quiet. He said "Ok," then "All right," and then handed the phone back to me. He never said another word.
My kids exited the bus and headed over to the van which they saw wide open. I got on the bus and got little Mathew out of his safety harness and carried him off the bus. I didn't look back. Once in the van the kids told me how the driver was punching the ceiling of the bus and telling the children to be quiet so he could focus on what he was supposed to be doing. Of course the kids were all being noisy because they were all upset watching their bus stops go by. I also found out that Ajia was crying on the bus as well.
Can you imagine being in a bus that is supposed to drop you off at your destination and it just keeps flying by it. As an adult I find that very upsetting to think about. Someone else is in control and they don't know what they are doing. They are flying up and down the streets trying to make a go of it. They aren't calling in for help because they don't want to look bad. Their focus has gone quickly from I am here for you to I am here for me. I don't want to look bad. And when you try to communicate with the driver he just gets upset and yells that you need to be quiet so he can focus. Helpless is the word that comes to mind.
I guess that is a lot like our lives. Sometimes we find ourselves in places where we no longer feel in control. The bank has charged a maintenance fee that has thrown your account into the red and they are now bouncing your checks and throwing you further into debt with high bounce fees. You are working but your company is cutting back on hours when you are barely making ends meet. You are eating right, exercising and trying to keep yourself healthy only to find out that you have a terminal illness or disease. And the list could go on and on with things that we just don't feel we have control over. When that bus was blowing by our house I felt like I had no control. No way to save my children. To get them off that bus. It was very frustrating because I had two other children not on that bus that were stranded at school and needed me to be there to get them. I was helpless... until the I thought of that stick!
As always... God provides. If it hadn't been for that dead Mimosa in the yard and me standing there knocking the branches off it, I would have had nothing to have stopped that bus with. And I am not a stick thrower. I mean, when that came out of me, well... I am embarrassed when I look back on it. I make jokes when telling people the story saying I suddenly turned into neanderthal woman. "Me have stick. Me stop bus! Uugghh!" LOL I am not a stick thrower. I wonder what that woman on the phone thought when I suddenly burst out with "I am throwing this stick out in the street to get him to stop,"? LOL
Today when the bus came I told the driver he was never to take a day off again. We both laughed and then he started to explain why he had to have a day off. LOL Like I was serious. I asked him if he'd heard about the crazy lady that threw a stick at the bus to get it to stop. His eyes lit up as he said, "What?" I laughed and pointed at myself and then gave him the abridged version of what happened. I told him that I thought they should fire the guy. I was shocked by his reply. "They did fire him. I don't know why they ever brought him back." Crazy!!
My thoughts on it now? Thank you God for providing that branch that ended the craziness and stopped the bus! :o)*
