Over the decades I’ve been asked about my age many times by the kids on the bus. I’ve always asked them to guess. It’s a lot more fun that way. Guesses have ranged from zero to eighty nine million thousand. I always tell them the same thing. “Close!” It keeps them guessing.

Recently a young child asked, “How old are you Mr. Bus Driver Man Sir?”

I said, “I’ll be eleventy-nine on the eleventeenth of Octember, the eve of the crescent blue moon.”

The kids, way too smart for that nonsense, started to pick apart my logic immediately. So, I guess we’re back to the guessing game.

 

In a previous blog entry I told you about Ray, the five year old ray of sunshine. I haven’t seen Ray in quite some time. I don’t know if he moved away or if his parents drive him to school. I suspect that he travels to in intergalactic school in a space craft of his own design. I’d like to share some of Ray’s wisdom.

Ray: My parents are probably a thousand years old and they drink a LOT of coffee! They don’t eat food. They only eat coffee for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Ray: Let’s drive to Mars today, then Jupiter, my favorite planet. I don’t want to go yesterday, that’s already past.

Me: Okay, how do we get to Mars.

Ray: Turn left, then turn right, turn right again, turn left, go up the hill, down the hill, then turn right, and turn left. (In my head I’m following his directions and they are the exact directions to school) Then at school there’s a portal. We go through the portal and get to Mars.

I try to trip him up on the directions by intentionally asking if we turn left at the next street.

Ray: No, turn right! Why do I have to tell you three times? Tomorrow we’ll go to Haumea. (I had to look that one up.)

Ray was planning our route for the week:

“TLAA614 is the Slime Planet. Watch out for slime asteroids. Cars are sleeping slime asteroids. The Bufepire planet is the danger planet, T-Rex is the hot planet. Let’s skip Bufepire. It’s too dangerous. We’ll go to the sun. We need sunglasses and sun block. Then we go to Mercury and the Chicken Nugget planet.”

Me: What about the Bufepire planet?

Ray: No, it’s too scary! I’m the boss of the planets. We’ll go to Planet HR652199C12.

Me: I don’t know how to get there.

Ray: Just look at a map. (Do 5 yr olds even know what a map is anymore?)

 

In other school bus news…

I overheard two middle school girls talking about music.

Girl 1: I never thought I’d like Norwegian Death Metal but I love it!

Girl 2: I love Japanese Death Metal even more. It has lots of heart and soul.

 

The Weather on the Bus goes Round and Round…

Although my bus has no air conditioning, it has a front heater and a separate rear heater that both work very well. I never know how hot or cold it is in the back of the bus until the kids complain, so one day I asked, “How’s the weather in the back of the bus? Is it snowing?”

A little boy replied, “No, there’s a firenado!”

I said, “What’s a firenado? It sounds scary!”

The boy said, “It’s a fire tornado. It’s not scary. It went away.”

Thank goodness for that! They didn’t train me on how to deal with firenadoes on the bus.

 

One afternoon last week a little girl and her mom were walking past my bus.

The girl stopped and asked, “Why are you always playing your guitar?”

I said, “Because it makes me happy.”

She thought for a second, smiled and said, “I have a play date with Emily today!”

That little girl wanted to share something with me that made her happy and it made my day!

 

Happy Thanksgiving and stay away from firenadoes!