The Wheels on the Bus

I'm something of an expert on riding a bus. I started my career when I went to kindergarten, and I've been a connoisseur of bus riding every since.

The leader of Bus World is the bus driver. When I was a kid, the bus driver had the power to give you detention. Now that I'm an adult, the bus driver can have you physically removed by the police. This is much worse than detention, but I've never seen it go that far. Most adult passengers respect the power of the bus driver. We know the bus driver can stop the bus, and we have places we need to be. Still, the bus driver likes to remind passengers that she is in command by looking at us in a way that could vaporize Superman. Sometimes I want to bring my bus driver a donut, just so she'll smile at me.

But the worst part about Bus World is waiting for the bus in the wintertime. When I was in middle school, my mother used to drive me to the bus stop. I don't know why she didn't just drive me to school. Maybe she didn't want the principal to see her in her nightgown?

Anyway, when it was minus forty degrees outside, my mother would make me wear enough clothes to cover a large, shivering elephant. In middle school, I definitely did NOT want to look like an elephant. So as soon as my mother dropped me off at the bus stop, I would peel off as many layers as possible. Then I would promptly freeze.

Today, I've had a change of heart. I buy my own mittens. I don't care if I look like an elephant. My motto is, "I'll wear anything that's warm". This makes my best friend worry for me because she thinks I should avoid looking stupid at all costs. But she has a car. She doesn't understand. Sometimes a bus can take as much as ten minutes to arrive. Only mountain climbers and Eskimos understand anymore how cold it really gets on a winter evening when you are standing in one place.

Once I get on the bus, it's a pretty monotonous experience. I find a seat. I don't look at anyone. And sometimes I read a book

Riding the bus as a kid was way more eventful. When I was nine-years-old, my bus driver let me perform show tunes for the other kids. I'd stand in the middle of the aisle at the front of the bus and I would belt out the song "Tomorrow" from the play, Annie.The kids thought I was a movie star. I thought the bus was Heaven.

          But in middle school, Bus World became more hostile. Nobody wanted to hear a thirteen-year-old sing "It's a Hard Knock Life". And middle school boys started to tease me about my coat's resemblance to an elephant. So I stopped singing and took refuge at the back of the bus with the "cool" girls. These girls were actually loud, angry, defiant, and rude. But I thought they had POWER. When our bus driver growled at everyone else to shut up, the cool girls kept doing whatever the heck they wanted. My job as a Cool Girl Groupie was to sit next to them and giggle at every rude thing they did.

Well, now I ride the bus to work everyday instead of to school. I don't sit with any cool girls. I mostly just keep my head down and wait for the bus to drop me off at my stop.

But sometimes, in a fit of rebellion, I wonder what my bus driver would do if I got up and started singing show tunes now. It would make the bus ride more interesting, but I think the other passengers would throw their lunches at me.

I won't do it any time soon, but someday, when I REALLY don't care about looking stupid, I'm going to stand up and start singing, "The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round" and then I'm going to duck as a hundred turkey sandwiches fly straight at my head.