It is a basic assumption that school bus drivers have a lot of interaction with the students on board. But the truth is that there is little said between me, the driver and those who ride with me.
The most significant part is that they are kids. Kids want to talk to kids when they are on the bus. The last thing they want to do is interact with another adult since that is all they do at school, which is being told what to do by one adult or another. The kids either sit quietly, fall asleep or chat amongst themselves.
There is also the fact that I am at the front of the bus, and my primary focus is driving the bus safely from one destination to another. Everyone behind me just takes this action for granted, and I am okay wth that.
My favourite age group is grades one to three. At this age, they are starting to understand (or so they think) a lot about the world and are still very willing to listen and respect the adult figure in front of them. Their conversations about how and why things work are interesting and even humorous. Eavesdropping on these conversations is an entertaining way to pass my time when I am driving to the next kid’s house.
There is little opportunity to interact with this age group, but when there is, I grab it. Today, I am on a charter for a day camp to a waterpark. As the kids were getting off, all excited for this new, fun adventure, I would say good-bye, have fun, don’t get wet.
The “don’t get wet” part always gives me a few confused looks from the kids. Many end-of-year school field trips for younger kids involve swimming or activities with water, so I always remind the group not to get wet.
To my surprise, the kids who disembarked reembarked on the bus because the location we were at was not ready for them. The kids came back on board, and I joked that it was time to go home, and I was so glad they listened to me about not getting wet.
The kids all crowded around me, not wanting to find a seat but instead go out and enjoy the fun place they had been told to wait just a little longer for. In front of me is a girl, missing her front tooth, staring at me in confusion.
“Thank you for staying dry,” I said to her. “Nobody can have fun getting wet.”
This girl looked dazed and bewildered. “But you can have fun getting wet,” she said hesitantly.
“No way! It is impossible to have fun wet,” I said to her, trying to be as shocked as I could be at her statement. I backed up my statement with, “If you were in class right now, soaking wet, would you have fun? No! See, you cannot have fun wet.”
There were about eight kids all listening to my interaction with this confused girl, and all of them started to clamour to get their opinion across about how wrong I was about wet not being fun.
I replied to the group and countered every arguement they had with another example of where wet is not fun: going to bed wet, not fun, having a bath, not fun, sitting at school, not fun, sitting at school wet, even more not fun, any situation I said (while intentionally missing the obvious places that are fun, like this waterpark) was not fun wet.
The poor girl in front of me stared, struggling to understand me. She is at that age where she knows enough about the world to understand how getting wet can be fun, but also that age where she is still to listen and even obey an adult. She struggled with the notion that I was saying being wet is not fun. The whole purpose of today was to get wet, in her eyes, and today is going to be the funnest day so far in her summer holiday. How is this crazy old man saying it is not fun to be wet???
“How is it fun being soaking wet and dripping everywhere?” I asked the group who was now ganging up on me. “It is not fun dripping everywhere.”
A different girl piped up and said I could use a fan to dry myself. I grabbed a piece of paper and started fanning myself, and asked if this would help.
A boy, who had been intensely listening but not speaking up, interrupted the group at this point and said, “Fans make people hot. Fans don’t work.”
There were a few camp counsellors in this group listening to the entertainment of what was being said by me and the kids. One of the counsellors stepped into the conversation and asked the boy how a fan might make you hotter.
“A fan draws heat toward you,” he informed his supervisor for the day, “it makes everyone hotter.”
“That is not how fans work, ” quipped the counsellor.
“Wait,” I budded in, “it is! Instead, it takes the heat from you and pushes it to everyone else.” This statement sparked earnest debate between the boy and several girls. They concluded that fans push heat away and make others feel hotter. So, if everyone had a fan, then the teacher would get all the heat. All the kids agreed with this conclusion.
The counsellor, who challenged the boy on how fans worked, then asked the boy where the heat would go if the teacher also held onto a fan? Nobody could answer this.
I was impressed with how kids try to explain the world. They had everything solved until someone asked them about one key variation to their solution.
A girl sitting a few seats back took advantage of the silence in the group to bring us back to the original topic of how I think it is impossible to have fun when wet. She is a smart kid, a bit older than the ones I was talking to, and came up with a beautiful response.
“It all depends on the situation. Today is summer vacation, and we are here on a hot day at a waterpark. We are going to get wet, and we are going to have fun. If it were winter, it would not be fun, but because it is today, it is fun.”
A great answer. One that I did not challenge. The group accepted and seemed glad I was soundly defeated in our debate on the funness of wetness.
I looked around at the group. All of them were satisfied. A conversation started between them, and they even decided to sit down and wait out the delay, except for the missing-tooth girl. I looked at her. She still stood in the same spot, staring at me with a perplexed look on her face. Was she like this the whole time?
I like interacting with this age. It can be interesting what is all said and how they explain things. I couldn’t tease teens with getting wet, and there is no way I would say any of this to kindergartners, because they would take it so literally.
Grades one to three – the age group where you can say outrageous things and they are old enough to say you’re wrong and come up with rather interesting responses. I love my job as a bus driver.
