Now, I’ll admit that I thought for a while before accepting the route. How did it transpire that I drove that particular bus, that route, and those five children? Like so many instances in life, it was pure luck. Or a short bus, though I don’t much care for that term. Your mind immediately directs itself towards the question: What experiences could be so monumental as to alter the course of someone’s life-to challenge them, shape them, and make them think in new ways? Most people assume it those experiences would surely involve galvanic occurrences: climbing Mount Kilimanjaro or running with the bulls in Pamplona or having a child or falling riotously in love.Īnd while those things most certainly are life-altering-at least, they hold that potential-events that change lives can also happen more gradually and on a smaller scale.įor me, that change happened while driving a bus. Here’s the thing, though: I could not have fathomed just how fun, how sometimes shattering, but ultimately how transformative driving a school bus could be. My eighteen-year-old self would just have to learn to cope with the disappointment. In truth, and simply, at that point in my life I needed a gig. That younger self had anticipated a life of romance, wild adventures and derring-do, each new excitement out-doing the last.Īh, but isn’t that the privilege of youth? To wish for such things? If you’d told my 18-year-old self that my 31-year-old self would be contemplating driving a school bus, my younger self may have been appalled. After a disastrous job interview in which I tried (and failed) to find work as a cafeteria supervisor at a local middle school, I returned home to find a flyer in my mailbox. My savings, already slim, were dwindling to nothingness. I was living in Calgary, in western Canada. My own path was clearly delineated, with a single guiding objective: I desperately needed a job.
#Precious cargo transportation chicago drivers
I imagine those personal vectors are as diverse as the drivers themselves.
I am not sure how a lot of people come to drive a school bus.