Among Other Things, School Buses

Disclaimer: No children or small animals were hurt during the research/creation portion of this essay.

Yesterday, while taking a load of Kindergarteners to Buda TX, to visit the Fire Station, I wrecked the school bus. My upbringing left me saddled with an above average amount of guilt, so it's my nature to take the blame for things—even when they aren't my fault—and in this particular case, it really wasn't; I was following the hand signals of a very nice, very earnest young firefighter and he guided me right into a fire engine. More specifically, he guided me into one of the engine's side view mirrors that are about eight feet off the ground. I want to be nice, but in retrospect, I really expected him to pay attention to all of both vehicles, not just the eye level parts.

It's really not hard to be understanding when the vehicle—or as in this case vehicles—you've wrecked are not your own, but still
both the bus and the fire truck looked to be brand new. I know the bus is; I've been a volunteer driver for my son's school for going on three years now and the bus still has less than 9000 miles on it. The fire engine looked like it had just been acquired at Toys-R-Us and they'd decided to super size it.

All the same, I did feel bad. The school was nice about it and the Lieutenant who took down my information and shot photos of the damage was cordial, if not friendly. Back at the school I showed the damage to a woman I'd never met and she said "It could happen to anybody."

That got me thinking. Anybody is a lot of people. This may come as a shock to you; I know I was stunned by this undeniable truth. Not many are so streamlined. I don't know if what followed was the result of my epiphany, or just timing. Regardless, I was stopped at a traffic light when a school bus rolled through. I glanced at then looked again. It was dented. The light changed and I hadn't gone far when I saw another lightly damaged school bus. The children seemed happy. I saw three more buses in the space of an hour and all of them were damaged in some way or other. I know we could look at this metaphorically, but tonight I'd rather just be literal. As Freud is purported to have said "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Anyway, there were dents on top and dents down low. There were scrapes and scratches and in one case, a long smear of Anthracite blue trailed down the passenger side—if a bus can truly be said to have just one passenger side—and was clearly the result of the driver misjudging the distance from bus to car.

Ordinarily, other's misfortune doesn't make me happy; I'm usually pretty sympathetic. But the long parade of less than pristine school buses really has made me feel better and tomorrow I plan to scout for more. I'm glad tonight's a school night.