Greetings!

Did I mention how much fun being a school bus driver can be? I get to nurture my inner goofball every day.

The little kids in the front are often trying so hard to be grown up while their bus driver is being silly. One day the little ones were challenging each other with math equations.

“How much is three plus six?”

“What’s ten times ten?”

I jumped in. “What is eleventeen plus eleventy-five?”

They threw answers at me:

“Sixteen!”

“Twenty six!”

“Four!”

“No,” I said, “the answer is purple.”

One wise young child said, “You can’t mix numbers and colors!”

Another wiser child said, “Those aren’t even real numbers!”

They got me.

The little boy in the seat behind me loves cars. He’s always playing with his toy cars and pointing out the cool cars on the road. He gets particularly excited when he sees a Tesla.

I asked him, “What’s your favorite car?”

He said, “Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bugatti, McLaren, Maserati, Tesla, Mustang, Dodge, and a little thing called BMW.”

My inner goofball said, “How do you spell BMW?”

He said, “Huh? Why are you trying to make me think?!”

Words of wisdom and time travel from a boy on the verge of his fifth birthday: “When I was older I will grow up.”

A pair of second graders were arguing about colors. The girl said, “Pink is a terrible color!”

I said, “Why is pink so terrible?”

She said, “Because it’s bright and colorful!”

The boy said, “Red is also bright and colorful.”

She replied, “Red can be happy or mad or sad. Pink has no feeling!”

And sometimes things just happen that make me feel good about being a bus driver.

The bus I drove last year had a CD player. Remember those things? I used to play Chrissie’s and my cd Playing in the Dirt for the kids.

Recently a fellow bus driver said that she drove my old bus over the summer and noted that I had left my CD in the player. She played it for the kids on the summer route and they loved it!

I was walking through a crowd of people one day when a man I didn’t know noticed my bus driver jacket.

He said, “You’re a school bus driver?

I said, “Yes, I am.”

He said, “Thank you for keeping our kids safe!”

He walked on, making my day brighter.