The Bus Driver

Every mornin he came out of his house and boarded the school bus, his red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks betrayed how homesick he felt the farther he got away from home.

Barely four feet tall.

First year in school.

Maybe nobody else on the bus recognized those telltale signs and knew what they meant, but I did. That’s because I knew how he felt. Exactly how he felt.

My family moved a lot when I was growing up. My sister, the oldest of us four kids, had the worst of it because she attended twelve different schools from first to twelfth grade.

Sometime the moves were easy, “a grand adventure.”

Other times they weren’t.

My third-grade move was the hardest one for me. I can’t tell you why because I don’t know why. But every day, after lunch, I would feel that tightness in my chest that worked its way into my throat as tears pushed against the back of my eyes.

Try as I might, I couldn’t hold it back. So, I folded my arms on top of my desk, buried my face in them and sobbed; big tear drops dripping off my nose onto the top of the wooden desk and running across the myriad names that had been scrawled and carved on it through the years.

Nobody in class said anything to me about my crying spells, not even the teacher.

Eventually, it got better, and I settled in.

I hadn’t given it any thought since then, that is, until I saw that little blonde-haired boy.

I was in the ninth grade and “all grown up,” riding a bus full of kids I was friends with.

I could have offered to let the boy sit with me.

I should have.

It was the bus driver though that made the extra effort to help the boy settle in. He told him he had a special seat reserved right behind him for the boy. Every morning, he smiled at him, called him by name and told him how glad he was to see him.

One morning, the boy’s hands were full of papers and a poster board for some sort of project he’d done overnight. The driver turned the engine off and got up to help him with everything and get him settled in his seat.

When the bus arrived at our school, we all jumped out of our seats and pushed down the aisle like a stampeding herd, which makes no sense because none of us were eager to go to school.

Unfortunately, when the little boy got up, he dropped everything into the aisle and began to wail as students stepped on his poster board without giving him a glance.

The bus driver jumped up and roared like a lion for everyone to sit down. It was a side of him none of us had ever seen. We were shocked into obedience.

Getting down on one knee, he talked in quiet tones to the boy and picked up every last piece of his project and carried them off the bus and gave them to him when he got off.

It was the kindest act I’d ever witnessed and struck me with a force that made tears pool in my eyes. Maybe it was because of how happy I saw the boy was.

Or maybe it was because I wished someone had done that for me years ago.

I do know this: my entire adult life I’ve tried to be like that bus driver and be on the lookout for people who look lost and need someone to show them kindness.

I hope you’ll try to imitate that bus driver, too.

* Taken from The Wit and Wisdom of David Johnson, Volume I1: The Hairy Catfish Caper.