Chapter 14 - Other People's Children

Maria Escalante was not Costa Rican either, but this school bus is.

Maria took a job driving a school bus. At the interview, she was worried that the school board would look into her record and not trust her with the safety of children but fortunately, the issue never came up and she was offered the position on the spot. She decided right then and there that she would not let seeing other people’s children every day would not make her sad, but instead she would concentrate on being the best of all possible bus drivers. Maria had concentrated on a lot of things in her life but before she had become a bus driver, external circumstances prevented her from getting any benefit out of her focus. However, though she never realized it, she did actually become the best of all possible bus drivers.

The big city school district had a hard time assigning drivers to routes for any extended period of time. The sort of people who were willing to drive pre-pubescent children around town for near minimum wage generally had neither the work ethic nor the strength of character to stay in the position long. The children in Maria's bus had already seen seven drivers that semester. They still talked about the one who would call sports talk radio to scream, the lady who cried all of the time, the mean one who gave assigned seats and did a graffiti inspection at each stop before anyone could get off. The other three were frightening unspoken memories.

But when Maria drove, the kids looked forward to taking the bus. She was the first driver they had seen who actually knew their names and she never had to call anyone young man or young woman. The kids felt that she really knew them and she understood the children in a most un-adult kind of way. She may not know the names of the latest cartoon characters or the popular T-Shirt band but she understood why the kids liked them, why they were important.

She was also very good at divining the flavor of each child's family life and knew how to provide, just by driving the bus, whatever the child missed the most. For some kids a smile was all that was needed. For some it was a steady voice of reason. With one child in particular she found a way to pack him a lunch each day and give it to him without anyone noticing.

On her fifth anniversary of being a bus driver, Maria’s boss gave her a card with a gift certificate for the local coffee shop. Maria didn’t drink coffee but she enjoyed the cup hot cider and cinnamon doughnut very much