Got Seat?

Back in August I spent four long days trying to get my son a seat on the school bus. It seems there are so many kids riding this bus that unless they are placed just right, they don’t fit. I wrote an article called 'Got Seat? - A Mother's Quest to Secure a Seat on the School Bus for Her Son’. It was a form of therapy for me. Here’s an excerpt which describes how a Transportation supervisor ‘fit’ the kids on the bus:

‘My son advised that someone came on the bus this afternoon and rearranged them so they would all fit on the bus. He said several kids were very tightly crammed three to a seat. No seat assignments were given. Ok, let’s go over this. You have a bus full of middle schoolers. The ones with absolutely no frontal lobes that they choose to isolate at a school for two years. You rearrange them by size on the bus like a puzzle until they all fit. The skinny kids get the short end of the stick because they look like three of them can be crammed into one seat. I can just hear her saying ‘I need another fat kid over here!’ Then you tell them ‘See, you can all fit!’ No wonder kids think adults are idiots – we are!’

Despite seat finally being assigned, Brandon continued to struggle to get a seat and continued to describe what seemed to be a free for all on the bus as the bus driver did not seem to enforce the bus rules. Sooo… we arranged for a meeting with the bus driver and his supervisor.

The bus driver was the stereotypical bus driver. I won’t go into detail but I swear everyone describes their childhood bus driver using the same characteristics. This bus driver made it clear that no one tells him how to run his bus. After some pretty ugly scenes between him and Papa Bear, not to mention a couple of verbal swats from the growling Mama Bear, it was decided that he would enforce the bus rules (and the seating assignments) and follow the procedures for addressing violations of bus rules. Did I mention that that was in his job description, therefore, was his job?

We do not have a lot of confidence that things will turn around but remain cautiously optimistic. It takes a lot of energy on our part to pursue these issues. Most parents would just drive their kids to school or tell them to deal with it. Sad, isn’t it?

Same thing seems to be happening with the financial state of the nation. Most people do not want to protest in any way in fear that it would be perceived as civil disobedience. Some of these people are the same people who back in the 60’s and 70’s protested about everything (those were the days!). We just keep on voting the same idiots that got us into this mess back into office and complaining about how things never change. (I saw a sign on the news the other day that I really liked. It said ‘We can’t fix stupid – but we can vote them out of office’.)

As I said before ‘No wonder kids think adults are idiots – we are!’