Whenever I am driving, I wear large, wrap-around blue sunglasses. These are great at preventing glare and reflection. Plus, bright lights trigger migraines, and I can never think of a reason why I would want one of those.
I had little idea how I would be identified with these sunglasses. I have been wearing this style for as long as I can remember. I go everywhere with these on my face. I even wear them inside (all because of the migraine thing). Everywhere, every time, every day.
As a school bus driver, I love landmarks. I am always driving to the landmarks on my route. There is a red mailbox before one kid’s home that tells me his stop is coming. I come across a white van that always parks in the same spot, so I need to turn down this one road. Apparently, children look for landmarks too.
My main route services a school where over 30 buses are parked in one location. There are six rows, with 4 to 7 buses in each row. School buses all look alike, making it harder for many people to find a particular bus. Route numbers are in the window to help students find their ride home, but I discovered no one looks at them.
A few months ago, the bus I was assigned to changed. I received a brand new bus to replace my aging one. I appreciated this switch, and things were going well until they weren’t. The bus is prone to annoying electrical issues with lighting. None of these issues affected the bus’s safe operation, but they did require constant maintenance.
In all of these situations, I had to use a different bus. I would religiously place my route number in my window until, one day, I forgot it. To my surprise, the kids recognized me and entered the bus. No student was confused about which bus to ride home, even when I had the wrong route number in the window.
After this discovery, I stopped placing the sign and left whatever was in the window in its place. Then something more interesting happened; I took off my sunglasses.
It was a dark day, and it was getting ready for a storm. Wearing sunglasses made everything too dark, so I removed them. I saw something very weird: the kids were lost on which bus to enter! My sunglasses were their landmark, and without these on my face, they could not find the proper bus.
To prove the significance of my sunglasses, kids from different schools recognize me for my sunglasses. Occasionally, I will cover an elementary school route and take these kids home. It is always after my high schoolers, and I have no time to change the route number in the window. Here I am, arriving on a different bus with the wrong route number, and I am a different driver than they would typically expect, yet they all knew to come to my bus all because of my sunglasses.
Even one school bus driver knew I was driving toward him because he could see the blue reflection before he could see me. This pair of sunglasses defines me to those who interact with me daily, whether they are students or adults.
I have more school bus stories at https://travelswithstacey.com/category/school-bus-driver/
