To be or not to be

I have never really understood Shakespeare that way I maybe should.  Never been able to get in to it all that much. The world might look down on those who have never been able to grab his artistry but it seems like for now I have to be one of those.  About all I have from him is "does not a rose smell as sweet by any other name?".  I kind of get this one but then I figure somehow I always kind of knew that.

Speaking of different terms, when you enter the bus driving world you become exposed to many of them.  I talked the other day about some of the terms you hear on the bus.  Today though I want to talk about some of the things I have noticed in the bus world.  I am not sure Jeff Foxworthy and Shakespeare should ever appear in the same writing but for the purpose of this blog I must put their ideas on the same page.

Foxworthy made himself famous with what I might call his "redneck jokes".  You might be a redneck if your daddy stares at the orange juice can in the morning because it says concentrate". 'You might be a redneck if your house has the ability to get flat tire ." "You might be a redneck if the sport you enjoy the most consist of all left hand turns."  And on and on.  So far I have noticed a few things about bus driving. As the driving of one does gets more experienced you start to find changes in habit. So far there are a few things that stand out for me. You might be a bus driver if you find your car stopping at Railroad tracks and opening the window. You might be a bus driver if you know what a tire buddy is. You might be a bus driver if you know what a pre-trip routine is. You might be a bus driver if you know what 10-4 means.  You might be a bus driver if you do not spend a lot of time in the petite clothing section in clothing stores.  You might be a bus driver if you try not to sign up for a route with middle school kids.  And so on and so on.

One of the things I have learned is that the closer you follow a routine the better it will be for both you and your passengers.  What the people do who train you for a job such at this is that they work you in to a routine and eventually you find yourself taking driving more seriously than perhaps I had ever thought of before. One of the nice things is that because of the training and some of the related difficulties in prepping and driving a bus with kids on it you find yourself no longer thinking about certain things in the driving area. Those become part of the woodwork.  Fact is that packing 60-70 kids on a bus is a huge distraction and the better you have the routine down the better you will do.

I had a grandfather who was a mechanic.  He never could figure out why mechanics did not make as much as doctors.  His argument was that mechanics had to work on all sorts of brands and models and doctors only had two. He figured that pipe organs in the backs of churches were a bad idea because if God would have wanted them put there he would have put our ears on the other way around.  He always was thankful that God put our noses on our face the way He did because if they were upside down we would potentially drown every time it rained, that is unless we blocked out the rain by holding our fingers over our nostrils when it rained, which could present a danger to the eyes if we ran in to anything when it was raining. I am not sure how he developed all these fine ideas but somehow when he presented them in years gone by they made some sense to us.

I checked with one of our drivers the other day and I told him that I sensed a feeling of relief when I dropped off that last kid and the bus was empty.  This person told me that after many years of driving he felt the same way yet today.  I must tell you though that the trip back to yard after you are empty feels pretty good.  For me it gives me some time to think.

I was thinking on one of these trips back to the bus yard about Mark Twain.  He was once asked who he thought was the dumbest guy he ever knew.  He thought about it and said that for him it was Noah.  He reasoned that the way he figured it Noah had a chance to forever get of rid of mosquitoes and sure enough he brought a couple of them on board.

Another person I was thinking of is Thomas Jefferson.  Have you ever heard about the Jefferson Bible.  I have a copy of it.  What he did is chop out all the violence and anything controversial.  At least when you read it you do not have to ask the question of why all the violence in the Bible. For me right now on the trips back to the yard I sometimes wonder if somehow my Grandfather and Jefferson and Twain sometimes get together.  All of their ideas on these fronts make about the same level of sense.

So the question we are left with is "to be or not to be".  For me right now I would just as soon reside in the "to be" catagory.  Through the huge wipers on my bus, the people I work with, the related challenge, the promise of the spring, the humor that comes with life, the power of the engine,  the promise of youth and thoughts that come when the job is done, a word comes out and that word is "satisfaction".  And it cannot not be sweeter if it is called by any other name.

So maybe this Shakespeare guy had the right idea. In the adventures of human life, in the work catagories in which we all spend our time, in the relationships we all form, I am somewhat certain that we all can give thanks "to be".  It somehow beats all of the alteratives.

StM