• For most of the students at my preppy private school, whether we are at home or at school, the grown ups we know are sensitive, politically correct, and polite adults, basically the perfect role models. However on the Minneapolis bus, a new species of adult can be met; bus drivers. They are all different, completely unexpected, and sometimes bordering onto insane.
    George was by far the greatest bus driver anyone could have ever asked for. Or that is, once you got past his intense sexism, rude comments, and weird nicknames. My first year on the bus was in fifth grade. Every day I sat behind him and he would entertain me for the entire ride, he would make fun of sleepy students, sing off key, and tell stories of his wives, and childhood. By the time seventh grade rolled around, a whole group of three or four kids had joined me behind George. In January 2005 I left one week for a retreat organized by the school to a place called wigi, when I got back I was eager to see George. However my hopes were dashed when the bus door opened, and I saw someone else on George’s driving throne. Disappointed I took my seat behind him. When some more of my friends got on the bus, I asked them where he was, I expected a ‘he has a cold’ or ‘he is taking the day off to go hunting’ but instead I got a ‘he was fired’. They said that he had offended a woman who held a lot of power within the school. My jaw dropped. I wasn’t really surprised, I mean what could you expect from someone who swore constantly in front of little kindergarteners and blamed the concept of traffic on women drivers, but without George, who would drive our bus? Surely not the nincompoop in front of me who had already gotten us lost twice and was a half an hour late? I was told that no, he was just a replacement, but another bus driver would be coming soon. George had been our bus driver for three years; a record still unbroken by any monarch bus driver.
    The next driver we had was another old man. He was fat and didn’t fit on the seat, he wore a mesh truckers hat on his head and brown stains on his shirt. We tried talking to him, and he was more than happy to. The only problem is he wouldn’t stop. He started off with a tale of how he was mugged in New York, and about his old job working as clown. The worst part though was then he somehow ended up talking about his old girlfriends. By the end of his rant we knew more than anyone should ever know about their driver’s love life. We agreed to sit in the back of the bus the next day.
    Eventually after about a month and a half, the clown left us. We never asked why, we were just happy he was gone. We were left with a woman bus driver who was both very fat and very pregnant. She had a daughter around a year old who would sometimes sit in the seat behind her. Sometimes we would talk to the woman driver, but while she was nice she was also very boring to talk to. Her pregnancy coupled with her young child made her take a lot of sick days, so in that time we got to know a lot of other bus drivers as well. As her pregnancy lagged on and on, we began to wonder about her baby. Finally one brave boy on his way onto the bus asked her “So when is the baby due?” Everyone on the bus was quiet and listening, as her pregnancy has been the subject of much gossip on the bus. She looked up frowning and stated in a cold voice “I had it a month ago” The boy stammered his apologies, and ran to the back of bus in embarrassment. She was moved to a new rout two weeks later.
    We had several bus drivers at the end of ninth grade and the beginning of tenth. There was Marcus, who was nice, but too polite. While he was always nice, he wasn’t approachable, and he was very distant. We had a woman who was always talking to people on speaker phone. For a month and a half we had a young man as our bus driver, when we introduced ourselves to him and asked his name he freaked out and told us a name was something private, and that we should mind our own business. We nicknamed him twitch.
    Our current bus driver is really very old, and skinny, and he reeks of cigarettes. We have only been on the bus with him for two days now, and we have not yet found his quirks, but I’m sure they’ll show up soon.