So, it's easy to let yourself feel like you're stuck in a rut, a piece worker on an assembly line, working with a quota. For the bus drivers, you're paid to pick up kids at home and bring them safely to school, then pick them up at school and bring them safely back to their houses, you have the same route, out here for years, going over the same countryside over and over again. (For hilarious measure, all of my routes are literally giant loops.) It's easy to get stuck, and then, you get angry at the stupid and slow drivers, annoyed by road construction because it adds literally miles to the flow pattern, unhappy at the empty clock that screams you're late, angry that no one plows the roads where you travel....em....well, you get the picture. It works for some of us I guess; they need routine or they simply find their way around the routine. For instance, the previous driver on my route would apparently drive it different ways, which caused me issues initially.
One day, not too long after I took over the route, one of my high schoolers came up and asked me how I could possibly do the job.
"Yuck! How boring!"
I didn't have to think about it; I simply replied, "No. It's not."
Now, I know that he did not understand, all he saw was same old, same old, and not much money to go with this particular dose of the daily grind, but I had (and still have) an "office" with quite a view. Yep, a big, gigantic picture window and it shows me a thousand pictures. Even in the worst of moments when I can not pay attention due to weather or mood, I still get to feel the subtle color changes in the swirling clouds as the sun stretches up towards the horizon, soak into my being the setting moon in the early AM, get a subtle rub of a rainbow as the storm rushes toward you instead of away from you. I can see, in the coming light of dusk, the dark silhouettes of the regal turkey as they flip, flap, and glide twenty-five feet into the air, rising above you, the bus, and the road you're on, flying in formation like cattle coming in from the pasture, all "follow the leader," only disappear into the shadow of the corner of your eye to hide their not-so-graceful "plop and gallop/warble to a stop" landing in the field next to you.
Why even this past Monday, our first day after Christmas break, old Mother Nature presented us the most beautiful gift of hoarfrost at noon. (With appropriate old professor voice, reader's choice: Yes, hoarfrost. Hoar is spelled correctly, you naughty kids. If I am not mistaken it is the Middle English word for hair. Check out the Grand OED, that's Oxford English Dictionary for those who do not know the acronym.) The frost was amazing. Just west of our little hamlet of 3000 people, the fog was very dense, 1/2 mile visibility by my guess. But when you looked directly straight up into the sky, there was nothing but deep blue. It was like being placed into a sliced egg where the yolk should have been. (Yeah, that analogy didn't quite work for me either. I'll get it fixed.) It was bright, very, but the fairly recent snow was so pure. The dark shadows of the gnarly trees were almost black in their uprights but white and furry otherwise, oh, and, as the first 4 year old to board the bus on my noon route pointed out, sparkly. It was magic.
I guess this little red head was feeling the magic of the day, because she was dying to show me something (I could tell because she was bouncing in her seat.) I told her she would have to wait until we got to school as the roads were not good and I had to work really hard at driving that day.
"Okay."
The entire route, when the door would open and before the student could even get on the bus, "Do you want to see a magic show? Do you want to see a magic show? Okay. Bipetty-boppetty-boo. Wait! Bippetty-boppetty-boo." Then giggles.
Finally, at school, "Bus driver! Bus driver! Do you want to see a magic show?"
We had some time before the teachers' aides came out to collect the students. "Sure."
With one arm extended and that hand firmly grasping the hat's "pompom," bipetty-boppetty-boo! (Yep, that was the magic word. Thank you, Mr. Disney.). Without flourish or apology, she took her hat with her other hand and flipped it inside out and put the hat back into her first hand like nothing happened.
"Ta-da!"
Then, "Wait, bus driver! Bippetty-boppetty-boo!"
She did the same thing as before but this time in reverse.
"Ta-da! Now, look, bus driver."
With a giggle, the show was done, one trick. She gathered her stuff and bounded off the bus. After a count of three, there was a cheer, somewhat flat if you ask me, and the rest of the bus evacuated the bus giggling and smiling.
Where does your "office window" lead? Bippetty-boppetty-boo!
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