A Swish and a Wish

A Swish and a Wish

I want to start something new.  As life's events have unfolded I have chosen to drive a school bus.  I am not sure if anyone on this planet will find that all that interesting.  I recall watching a show from my generation. I think the show was called “The Honeymooners”. In that show Ralph drove the bus and Art cleaned the sewers. I must tell you when I watched this show I somehow had the feeling that each of these guys had a rather menial job.  As the years have passed  my perspective  has changed.  I am starting to think that the more menial people of the world run the world a little more than fits the imagination.

Let me tell you a story.   Kind of an old one perhaps but it is about a school where the people who ran the thing had a big problem.  Somehow the  mirrors in the middle school girls restroom was covered with lipstick.  Turns out the girls were practicing kissing on the the mirrors. Not sure if they were looking for their first kiss but anyway they were practicing.  After some meetings on how to handle this for the staff,  each who made quite large educational assessments of the problem, a janitor came in and told all the educated staff that he might be able to solve this.

He gathered the girls in the restroom, he dipped his mop in the toilet and he ran the mop up and down the mirror till all the lipstick was gone. He informed them that this is how he dealt with this problem on a regular basis  He then told them they could practice kissing all they wanted.  There was not much lipstick on the mirror beyond that point.

The title of this blog is the “wipers on the bus”.  Oh how boring.  But the front windows on buses  are  huge and every day as I drive down the road I see a new perspective.  When I turn the wipers on I see even more. So the title of this thing is going to be the “The Wipers on the Bus”.  It is going to have some stuff about young people,  some stuff about politics, some stuff about  human relations, some stuff about astronomy,  a few things about theoretical  physics, some stuff about kids and mixed in between a few poems and few stories that my readers might find interesting.  I am also going to mix in a few things about family.

Somehow I started this job in the middle of the winter.  I read a few blogs on school bus driving (of which I could find 3 or 4.)  One of the better writers talks a little about how school buses sort of remind her of giant twinkies.  I passed the test to drive one of these things and on January 5 I climbed aboard for my first solo run on one of these monsters.  I got there a little early.  My numbered twinkie had the frosting removed from the inside. Instead mother nature had placed the frosting all on the outside. This bus was covered with about six inches of what we call here “lake effect snow”.    I have never been sure how “snow” and “lake effect snow” are all the different.  They both are white, they both feel cold, they both get packed down on the roads that make roads slippery and on this morning a gentle wind blew that obscured the west side of all the street signs with snow.  I really had no clue on where I was going.  I had driven the route the night before but everything looked different on this morning.

One of the interesting problems that my trainers had not prepared me for is the fact that school buses are not the fastest warming up animals on this planet. In fact the front windshield on this thing decided to kind of cloud over. The wipers, the defrosters and all the rest of the stuff on this bus decided that the frost and related film on this thing needed  to win some sort of victory.  Over the Christmas season we had spent some time with our  1 and 1/2 year old granddaughter and she had learned one song,  “The wheels on the  bus go round and round’.  The second verse is the “The heads on the bus go up and down” and the third verse is “the wipers on the bus go swish swish swish”.

It is my wish that the people that read this can feel the swish.  Please let the clear windows bring  to your lives something special.  

As the wipers on the bus make a swish that brings clarity

Allow me to share a some thoughts that have  a strange rarity

As you read let me concede some feelings from my heart

Allow them to reach you solely as my attempt at art

We know that at times we will never really agree

With the ideas put forth let my readers somehow see

With any ideas of some guy who drives a bus

Waves of thought and ideas that should not cause a fuss.

I looked over the inside of this frozen Twinkie.  I am not sure why but for a moment I sat in the front seat and said a prayer.  I asked God if he would grant to me the privilege of transporting a bunch of kids and do it safely.  I kind of talked with God a little about how I had somehow arrived at the age of 63 and now sat in a frozen Twinkie.  I also asked him if somehow on this morning of snow and 7 degree temperature if He might help me a little in getting this sucker to start.  Not really sure that God has time for the school bus world or really is involved that much in getting engines to start. But I turned the key to right and somehow this baby fired up and the start of something new was in motion.

Stay tuned.  I have a few remarkable things coming up.  Bus driving is interesting and the widows are huge and the mirrors are amazing.  You can see where you are going and you can see from where you came. Please enjoy some of the introspections as well as the reflection as seen through these  windows and mirrors.

More coming!

StM

Am I sure I want this job?

Frozen Twinkie