This Bus Driver Sent Them All Down A Terrible Path

When I was a child, one of my school bus drivers had a petty feud with the family living about five doors down. Apparently, she had previously driven their child, and he had been extremely nasty to her.

This driver would go out of her way to run over their mailbox every time she ran our route. The family living there complained to the school board multiple times, but the response each time was, essentially, “Here’s our insurance information. Bill us.”

Well, they got sick of it. I remember watching in fascination as they rebuilt their mailbox from the ground up with metal and concrete. By the time they were done with it, it was obviously not a normal mailbox but some sort of incredibly reinforced mail structure.

I actually got to help them make it! They let me hold things for them and fetch tools! One of them offered to teach me how to use the welder, but my mom said I wasn’t allowed to learn how to use the welder.

Anyway, it so happened that, a few weeks later, the lady with a grudge was driving the school bus again. I got on the bus like normal, and I figured she’d seen the improvements and decided not to hit the mailbox today.

Nope! She had just decided to back over it. After I got on the bus, she kicked it into reverse.

The bus made the annoying beeping sound it makes when it reverses. Soon, added to this sound was the sound of grinding, tearing, and scraping metal. It was not a pleasant sound.

Many of the children on the bus started crying. I think some of the smaller children actually peed on themselves.

As I am autistic and have sensory difficulties, I slipped into a less functional state and started slapping my hands against my ears, chewing on my fingers, and rolling on the floor, trying to drown out the noise by shouting, and other techniques I used at the time when overloaded. I don’t really have a lot of memories of this time period.

I’m told that the driver managed to back mostly over the super-reinforced mailbox, but when it came time to pull forward off of the mailbox, the bus became stuck. She started rocking the bus back and forth, putting it into forward, reverse, forward, reverse, forward, and reverse until she was finally able to get the bus off of the mailbox.

She made it a very short distance before the continued grinding sound made her look back and realize that she’d left the rear wheels behind, still mangled on the mailbox.

They had to call a tow company to recover the bus and another bus to take us kids to school. We got to school about forty-five minutes late.

I was… not fit to learn; I was in full non-functional autistic mode. Several other children were similarly affected. The kids that peed themselves and the lower-functioning children were allowed to wait at the nurse’s office.

Unfortunately, because I was “high-functioning” and able to cope with a normal school day under normal circumstances, despite my requests to be allowed to rest at the nurse’s office and recover, I was told to suck it up.

I did not perform well that day. I got sent to the principal nine times for behavioral issues, ranging from irritability, shouting at the teachers when they made a misstatement, punching another child who was making loud noises and causing me pain, failure to pay attention, and engaging in “self-soothing” actions in class such as chewing on my fingers until they bled; these were classified as attempts at self-harm.

That one bad day followed me on my record the whole time in that school after that. Most of the teachers treated me differently after that. I was no longer treated like “just another student”. Instead, I was a Problem Student. 

I was disciplined more often and for actions that other children were not disciplined for, and I had more points knocked off of my grade for small spelling mistakes or lateness. I was able to get a math test from a friend of mine, and we compared sheets, and I found that I had lost points for “bad handwriting”. My friend’s handwriting was just as bad, but the teacher just asked him in class what he had meant to write.

My parents took me out of that school after I was able to coherently explain the events to them. It took me nearly a year and a half to explain what happened and why I suddenly went from being a high-scoring honors student to being in danger of being held back a grade.

With a new school and some directed therapy to overcome my trauma, my behavioral issues improved, though I was never again able to make the honors roll.

I also never saw that school bus driver again.