Bus

I do have a comfort zone. Rarely do I ever really step out of it, but it’s there, trust me. And my idea of a comfort zone is kinda weird considering how often it makes me uncomfortable, but it beats various other things that would make it suck even more.

Have you ever wondered what bus drivers do when their idiotic cretins are sitting in desks, getting useless information crammed into their heads? Where do we go? Hell? Narnia? The weird part of the Internet? Well, in my case, I go into my comfort zone. And by that, I mean that I head back to the county bus loop, drop off the bus, and zoom back home in my dinky little 1996 Ford Taurus, with the brakes squeaking so loudly it almost distracts me from the headache already forming in my brain.

And when I’m back at my apartment, I either sleep or surf the Internet as if to find meaning in this pathetic life. Sometimes I flip on the television and zone out when I flip through channels, totally not paying attention to anything. It’s a cycle. From about 10 AM to 2 PM, I’m stuck at home bored out of my brains. (Unless I go grocery shopping, which I normally only do on Fridays, but that’s beside the point.)

So, I’ve never done a field trip before. All I’ve known, as far as bus-driving goes, is driving kids to and from school, and never anywhere exciting where they get to basically skip school. So when I’m called up on Tuesday for a Sunrise Elementary field trip to go to the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge about an hour away from Yuma, I almost don’t believe it. I mean, hell, the lady calling me said I’d get paid a couple of bucks for the gig, so I don’t turn it down, but why me?

I tell Sharon about it that day, waiting for the cue for all the junior high bus drivers to head out to their respective bus loops, and she says it was “probably ‘cause you ain’t done one yet.”

“Why does that matter?” I ask.

“Well,” she explains, a hand on her hip, “it’s easy money. Plus, they know nobody’s gonna wanna drive grade schoolers, so they pick the folks who ain’t done it before. They say it’s based on seniority, but it’s all bullshit.”

Welp, I knew there had to be a catch.

As it turns out, I’m gonna be driving fifth graders this Friday. (Thank God they’re older elementary school idiots. Although, I can’t tell if that’s better or worse, honestly.) Plus, there will be teachers – two of ‘em, since the entire fifth grade class at that dinky school is only fifty, splitting to about twenty-five kids per teacher. Yet, still, that whole group is a lot more than twice the kids I drive every day. There’s gotta be some other poor sucker having to drive them. At least there will be crowd control and I won’t have to raise my voice, hopefully.

Well, the field trip ends up taking place at 10 AM, making me rush from the junior high to the elementary school that morning in order to take my place. I’ve got the directions in mind and when I open the doors to let the future hormone-driven assholes on board, only one teacher gets on, followed by a bunch of bored-looking losers wearing the kind of stuff you’d get your ass kicked for wearing back in my day. Seriously. What is with fashion now in 2011? They’re all talking about stupid bands I never heard of, regurgitating half the crap I hear every day from my middle schoolers. Nothing’s gonna change in two years for them.

Their teacher, a dazed-looking guy who looks like he’s just fresh out of college, tells them to quiet down with about as much oomph as a kitten. Despite being twice my height, he does nothing to intimidate them, though, and they just keep on talking.

As a little nod, I pull out my microphone and broadcast, “Guys, quiet down.”

He turns around and smiles a bit, not long enough to really translate to anything.

“Okay,” he says, “Mrs. Arnold’s class is right behind us in the other bus, but we’re gonna be touring in two separate groups at first, then we’re gonna switch whatever we’ll be doing with her class. Then we’ll eat lunch and walk around as one big group.”

Through the rear-view mirror, I see one girl raise her hand.

The teacher already knows her question. “And no, Paige, you can’t sneak up on Mrs. Arnold like that again.”

“Aw, come on! She’s only in her seventies,” the girl pouts. “She’s not even my teacher.”

I can’t help smirking. I hope I don’t end up driving her around in two years. Jesus, I hope I’m not still stuck doing this in two years, for that matter…

“That’s not the point. Any other questions?” he continues.

“Mr. O’Brien, can we touch the plants?” a boy yells from the back of the bus.

The teacher – Mr. O’Brien, I assume – shakes his head. “No, and that’s against park rules anyway. Now, any more questions?”

Silence.

“Alright, good,” Mr. O’Brien says happily. “Without further ado, let’s wait for the signal from Mrs. Arnold for us to head out.”

Peering through my rearview mirror, I catch glimpses of some huge frail old lady lecturing her class from the front seat – the same seat that this teacher took after talking to his brats. The other bus driver doesn’t look too thrilled either. Judging by the incredibly angular shape of his rusted bus and the various papers I can see hanging from the top inside frame, I can tell the dude’s a seasoned driver. Somebody made it that far.

The lady made some kinda signal to Mr. O’Brien (I don’t know why the hell I’m calling him that other than the fact that I don’t know his first name), and he tells me to start the bus and get going. For some reason, the kids cheer a little bit as we start moving and some even start standing up.

“Sit down, please,” I say in the calmest voice I can muster. Why not give ‘em a chance? “And windows up. It’s starting to get cold outside.”

Some little whiny bitch starts to say, “Awwww,” but Mr. O’Brien points at the kid and then they shut up.

When we get outta the bus loop, that’s when I turn on the radio, filled with stupid little songs about babies and teenage wet dreams and airplanes and shit. And kinda like a pill, the class takes it and shuts up, thank god.

The teacher kinda leans over and tells me, “Sorry about them. You’re doing a great job.”

And I say back, “You too, dude.”

~~~

When they’re dropped off at the Cibola National Wildlife Refuge, the buses park in the huge parking lot and we all get off, but lord knows I don’t wanna roam around with children like their teachers are forced to. So I hang back for a few minutes and wait for some kind of cue from the other driver, an old ginger guy who looks eternally pissed off.

That is, until he gets off the bus and walks around to my door, sticking out his hand with something like a smile – I can’t really tell since his beard covers most of his mouth and the emotion carried with it.

So I shake his hand, and he says, “Hey, how are you,” more like a statement than an actual question, and then in return, I say, “Good, good, and you?”

“Pretty decent. I’m glad this trip is supposed to be three hours long.”

The thing is, I’ve never done a field trip before, so I legitimately have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing in those three hours. I don’t wanna ask him – he looks like the kinda person who would laugh if I asked anything dumb – so I don’t. Still, he reads my mind indirectly.

“Yeah, it’s a good time to catch up on other work or reading if you just wanna sit on the bus. Costs too damn much for the drivers to have a tour,” he shrugs. His arms retract into a fold across his chest.

“I probably wouldn’t go either way. Too many children,” I kinda smirk, “and I had enough of that group on the way here.”

The guy tilts his head and tells me, “You did a pretty good job keeping them in order from what I could see.”

“Well, the teacher kinda helped.”

He nods. Then there’s that painful silence that I hate with a good chunk of my might.

I don’t wanna look like the conversation killer here, so I ask, “Hey, how old’s your bus?”

“About ten years. I’ve only been driving it since last year but I used to drive an even older one back in Florida when I lived there in my twenties.” He says it all so matter-of-factly as if I asked some kind of question meant to trigger fifty different other ones.

And yet, I bite.

“Good God, you’ve driven buses since your twenties?” I try not to sound so desolate or pitying, but I don’t think I really succeed.

He laughs for real this time. “No, hell no. God no. Only from twenty to twenty-four and for the past year while my band’s on hiatus.”

Oh, great. Now he’s in a band. Well, at least I won’t have to worry about killing three hours. Here comes a story. Well, at least, I anticipate one…but again we’re both quiet.

Until he speaks up again. “…But my band’s tour bus was a gutted short bus. I drove it, so I think that counts for something.”

“Cool,” I force. “What’s your band?”

“Eh, we haven’t gone anywhere since the early 2000s. Fire Motion, we’re called,” he states.

“You guys must have a ton of albums.”

“Well, four.”

“That can count as a ton.”

“Sure.”

“…Where in Florida were you from?”

“Gainesville.”

“Ah. Gator country.”

“Yup.”

Well, that’s five minutes that I’ll never ever get back. Not like I’m trying to make time go any slower than it already is, and at this point I don’t care if he starts talking about his entire life story, but the dude walked over to me.

“We toured with a few other bands back in ’09 and then I put my band on hiatus and headed out here because…because…well, shit if I know. My wife has an aunt who lives out here, I think’s what she said.”

“Yeah, nobody would move here on their own free will.”

“You don’t seem too thrilled about Yuma either.”

“Beats living where I used to. Well, sort of.”

“Yeah. But there’s nothing to do here,” the guy says. “No bands, no scenery, just dirt.”

“A few cacti here and there.”

“True, true.”

God, I’m bored.

But he gets this curious look on his freckled face and asks me, “You wouldn’t happen to have heard of a band called Plaster Caster, would you? Or some guy named Olli Hansen?”

“Uh,” I stutter, “no…”

“Ah. So they are just southeast.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Who’re they?”

“A few musicians I toured with a few years back. Just curious to see if they’d ring any bells. I’m always wondering about ‘em,” he trails off.

What a weird dude.

I hold in a comment about how they’re probably never gonna make it big, hiding my natural pessimism that tends to piss people off when they’ve got hopes higher than the Eiffel Tower. He just seems kinda “eh” about everything, though. Who knows.

We stand there for a few more seconds with our arms crossed over each of our chests, not in some sort of hostile manner but more of a way to occupy our hands to make it seem like we’re not just being awkward (though in more ways than one, that makes it even worse). I’m chewing on the inside of my lower lip and looking at the ground, at his filthy blue skate shoes and my own high tops I’ve had since I was in high school. In the distance, I can hear kids talking and some kind of poor tour guide forced to pilot them around the park.

“Hey, wanna go sit under the canopy? It’s hot in the sun,” the guy offers, pointing his thumb toward the unofficial entrance, a few benches under a canopy surrounded by what looks like stationary tumbleweeds.

“Sure,” I accept. I follow him towards it and, at the same time, try to think of some non-pathetic ways to lengthen the conversation.

When we sit down, he cocks his eyebrow at me and then says, “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Doug.”

“Oh. Well, I’m Justin.”

I honestly would not have guessed that in a million years. Dude’s gotta be at least thirty-five years old. Who named their kid that back then?

But for the next few hours, waiting for the kids to come back, it’s not so bad. At least, we’re not blanking out every few minutes or scrambling to think of some dumb filler that gets us nowhere. In fact, most of the conversation is filler itself, but it’s not the dumb kind. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like you learn about a person, but not in that small-talk kinda way. It’s better than sitting back in my apartment, sleeping. And at least I get paid for it.

~~~~~~`

When I drive the bus that afternoon through Alta Vista, I leave my window down and sometimes I hold my hand outside so I can feel what the wind is like, despite me yelling at the morons who think it’s funny to stick every appendage out the window.

I don’t think I made a friend today. Well, I know that. I know I’m never gonna see that dude again in my entire life, and I’m fine with that. I’m used to it. But I don’t feel like today was a waste. It was nice, in a way. Sometimes, the people I don’t despise inspire me. I don’t mean, like, inspire me to make music or draw or write a story. Well…on second thought, maybe that last one. Yeah, the last one. Only sometimes, though.

~~~~~~~

I checked out Fire Motion; they had a CoolTube channel, a Facenook page, a FlySpace, and they were even on SkyTunes. They’ve been around since 2000, and to me, they sound kinda like a punk band that discovered ‘Skynyrd and said, “What the hell? Let’s throw it all together. It can’t sound that bad.” And they didn’t. So I ended up liking it. Whatever.