Various thoughts

 

I made the right decision in 2006, job-wise.  At that time, I was delivering the paper to businesses and street racks all week, and it paid the bills… and left nothing after those.  I had been waiting and waiting and… you know, waiting for the SocSec Admin to hold up their part of the deal.  You know that deal – the one where they take 9% of your income and "promise" to give it back if you are disabled or die.

Fucking liars.

I was going to use some of that $ to get my CDL back and drive for a living, but that whole thing left me with no money and a debt to the liar, umm, I mean lawyer.  In great despair, I drove my routes and delivered more than a thousand papers a day until one night, I passed a school that had a sign saying "Bus Drivers Needed".  There was a phone number listed and after thinking it over, I called and found out that I could get a CDL out of the Paid training they offered.  All expenses of the training would be paid too, and I jumped on that and have not regretted it since.  I am in my third year of school bus driving, and rising in "time on the job".

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I work for  a school system and am a Union member and it looks like, no matter what, that I will have a job to do.  Without bus drivers, the rest of the school system has no reason for being because no kids would be able to get to school, unless their parents drove them.  I am in the right place, doing the right job, and although it’s been working out lately to be a 12 hour work day, and I don’t have much time or energy for anything else, there is that secure feeling that warms my poor soul.

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It was announced today that the US is in a recession, and has been for the last year.  No one in any position of authority would cop to what most people knew already, and no one is being held accountable, and if they are, well, they ain’t gonna lose anything over it.  A reputation?  Please.  Money in the bank is worth any reputation to theives.

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Getting back to the original point, I am in a good place, job-wise – it won’t evaporate, and my job won’t be shipped overseas, and I have enough seniority so that I won’t lose too much if things really go to shit.  (course, if they do, well, all bets are off)

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All my kids were wild today.  All of ’em, from Elementary School to Middle School to the High School kids.  By the end of the day, I had had enough and began to live up to my middle initial, "A", and it didn’t stand for Alan.  For the After School program I serve, instead of letting the kids get on and sit where they chose, I seated them myself, as they came aboard.  "1, 1, 2, 2", and so forth, assigning seats as they came aboard.

One kid has been sitting where he wants because he’s a "delicate" kid, but I’m fed up with his working that, and put him where I wanted… until he refused and crawled under a seat, and I pointed out that since we were still at school, that I could kick him off my bus and his parents could come get him.  True story.  In the good Old Days, a school bus driver could get rid of bad kids and leave ’em at the side of the road, fuck you Jack.  Nowadays, the kids think they hold the upper hand, but I got news for them.  My bus, my rules.  Period.

When that kid refused to move from the back to the front of the bus, what I wanted to do was to yank his skinny ass out of the bus, but instead, I got the instructor aboard and told Him that the kid was on the thinnest ice – he had better sit where I put him or not ride the bus.  Period on that one too.

After I seated all the kids, I stood up in the front of the bus and told them how it was going to be.  They would be quiet.  They would keep their hands off each other.  The trip home would be as long as they choose – make much noise and the bus would stop.  Behave, and we’ll get home that much sooner.  I get paid by the hour, I said, and since I was close to a ten hour day already, that much more time would be to my favor, not theirs.

I dropped off the last kid before 6 pm.  First, but not the last time that’s going to happen.  I am not paid to be their friend.  I don’t care at all whether or not they like me.  My job is to take them from point A to point B, safely.  Period.  If they are making so much noise and commotion that I can’t do my job, the bus will, and I mean WILL stop until it gets quiet enough for me to drive safely.  I can’t say you coulda heard a pin drop on the way home, but it was the quietest ride we’ve ever had.

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Coming home tonight, I found out, perhaps, why the kids were so wound up today:  there is a planetary alignment going on, and the unseen forces of the solar system are at work on the kids, who are young enough and weak enough to give in to the planetary influence.

Maybe, anyway, but that explains a lot to me. could be also why, when I parked the bus to layover until it was time to go get the after school kids that I forgot to pull the brake.

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12 more days of the year, class-wise, then it’s Winter Break, formerly know as Christmas Break.  Have to make the Jews and the Moslems and the Pagans and the atheists comfortable too, you know, so "Winter Break" it has become.

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I’ve been working long hours and haven’t had the time or the energy to take any new pictures.  A note yesterday objected to the picture I posted, saying that DecPhoMo postings had to be of new pictures.  If that’s the case, I got nothing to post, pic wise, so take them or leave them, your choice.  A good old picture is worth as much as a new good pic.  What you see is what you get.

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