Panic in a big yellow box

Stink bugs. All over the place.

Or at least, all over the bus.

Soaking in the rays on the sun-warmed yellow metal. On the windows, on the door, on the ceiling, crawling across the seat backs.

Add several dozen kids, the inevitable proportion of them still harboring a child's alarm at anything creepy-crawly, the predictable number unable to inhibit their excited reflexes for even a moment.

Bedlam in the bus.

Get on the mike, explain that they're harmless, that they don't attack people, that they don't bite. Or sweep sand off the beach - it's about as effective.

So just shrug your shoulders and laugh ... and hope they don't squish any of them.

For the record, they're harmless to humans, but they are pests. They're a recently introduced species (probably in the 1990s or 1980s) from Asia, and they are a problem for farmers. But really, they're not a danger to school kids on a bus!


(For all you ever wanted to know about stink bugs - more properly, Brown marmorated stink bugs (Halyomorpha halys), go to this web page from Penn State, which is also the source of the lovely portrait above.)

A lesson the teacher learned too late

The other day in Fairfield, Connecticut, a "popular teacher" shot a teen-age boy to death. No, not a class-room altercation, not an angry kid out for revenge over some classroom disciplinary action. He shot his son, in the driveway of his sister's house next door.

The news report (see the Associated Press report from the Washington Post here) dwelt on the tragedy, the mistaken identity in the dark and the  confusion of events that led up to it.

But what struck me even more than that were the implications of this paragraph from the article:

     State police said the shooting happened after Jeffrey Giuliano got a call from his sister next door saying that someone might be trying to break into her home in their neighborhood of attractive colonial-style houses. Giuliano grabbed a handgun and went outside to investigate, troopers said.

To re-state: the sister - the boy's aunt - was frightened and called her brother. Not the police; her brother. Same phone, different number, different results.

Had he been thinking, the brother, the teacher, the parent, would have called 9-1-1. Instead, he grabbed a gun, and went out to play a real-life game of cops-and-robbers, an amateur in the starring role of a tragedy that will forever sear the lives of his entire family. He went out to "investigate," and then his world changed forever.

Had the sister and the brother holed up in their respective homes and waited for the professionals, the incident would have played out very differently, almost certainly without its tragic ending. The police would have arrived in a few minutes, and would have worked to resolve the apparent emergency non-violently. As the boy wasn't apparently threatening anybody, they would in all likelihood have been far more hesitant to use their guns; would have called in reinforcements if necessary, would have illuminated the boy, would have talked to him, would have discovered what was happening. Most important, they almost certainly would not have killed the boy, and the family-rending tragedy would have been averted.

The lessons are clear. Maybe guns don't kill ... but people who rely upon them to resolve their fears often do. Beyond that, if ever one thinks that guns are needed, call on the professionals. It's easy; just dial 9-1-1. Then you'll have all the firepower you need, and it will be in the hands of people who know how to use it ... and when not to.

We have too many guns. Far too many. And far, far too often, they become the vehicle of tragedy.



Afterthoughts: What do you suppose the father would give to have those moments back again, so he could change their course? And how long do you suppose it will take him to put this night in the past? Probably a lot more time than he has left on this earth ....

It's a fragile thing

I saw a dead man today. Splayed out on the roof of the car that killed him. 

Two minutes earlier, he had been a living, thinking, feeling being, probably full of plans and hopes and concerns for his future -- maybe with a lot on his mind, or maybe just looking forward to getting home from work and relaxing. In the blink of an eye, all of that died with him. gone, in a blinding flash.

Two minutes earlier, the person who killed him may well have been heading home after a day's labor, too, perhaps thinking about plans for the evening, perhaps trying to cut a few seconds of the commute, perhaps just enjoying a song on the stereo. But now, he or she will spend the rest of their life reliving that moment, wondering why they hadn't been paying a little more attention, hadn't been a mite more patient, a tad more cautious. Living with it, living with the knowledge that willingly or not, culpably or not, they had killed another human being, snuffed out another life of possibilities and dreams. And wishing - wishing passionately, desperately -- that they could have that moment back, to do it right, to make it right, knowing they cannot, and knowing they will always live with the regret, the guilt, the remorse.

I didn't see it happen; I arrived a tiny bit later, to see the dead man lying in a position no living person would hold yet looking strangely peaceful and quiet in his deathly repose; lying alone while good citizens diligently directed traffic and talked into their cell phones (to the police? their friends?) while others stood by and took photographs ("my, what an interesting story to share over the dinner table!") or ran about, trying to help but doing nothing. The dead, lying alone, untended, as though none could summon the courage to approach something that moments ago had been so much like themselves but was now forever different, forever foreign, forever, until they themselves reach their own unimagined and unimaginable terminus.  

In a flash of a moment, it all changes. A moment that should have been unremarkable, and even was, for people going about their daily business only a few hundred yards away. A moment that should have been unremarkable but wasn't, a moment that utterly changed forever those two people, ruining the life of each, one instantly, and one over interminable moments that will haunt his or her existence to the end of time.

Life is such a fragile thing. Beautiful, and precious, but terribly fragile. We hold it in the cup of our hand, all our lives, in everything we do. 

It would be well if we held it with care, always mindful of our awful responsibility.

Privatized community

I live in a privatized community. It's a new community, not just built by a passel of large developers but more important, planned and designed by a passel of large developers.

It's not a town; towns are a type of political entity largely absent from my state. In most places, it's the county that matters, and for a variety of reasons the county here doesn't care, or bother. No, it's not a town; it's a conglomeration of housing developments.

The results are curious. What in most places would be public responsibilities are private ones here.

Roads, for instance. By in large, neither the state nor the county builds them or maintains them. So the developers build them as suits their purposes. A country road built long ago that has become a major arterial reflects this limitation: it's now a four lane divided road as it passes the developer's project, but reverts to its old, narrow, rough and poorly maintained nature as soon as it's past that project ... until it reaches the next developer's project. 

In new residential developments, roads sometimes don't quite connect between developments, as neither developer seems interested in incurring that last expense needed to tie their development to a competitor's. The disconnection is apparent even in roads that connect; if a street passes from one development to another, it's sure to change its name as it crosses the boundary - that makes if difficult for a stranger trying to find an address, but I wonder if it might also create potentially fatal delays as emergency service providers attempt to respond to calls for help.

Sidewalks are the same way. They're largely absent along state-maintained roads, and there is no consistency - and rarely connection - between the sidewalks of different developments. Which means that pedestrians suddenly run out of sidewalk when they reach the boundary of a development, and are forced to navigate as best they can along the roadway or its shoulder or the rough ground beyond. Sometimes the gaps are a matter of a few feet (again, the failure of developers to connect their sidewalks to each other's) but they sometimes stretch a mile or more.

Then there's the lack of planning for non-automotive users. Long stretches of road lack any accommodation for pedestrians, and road design ignores bicyclists - there are no bike lanes, nor are the right lanes of multilane roads widened to accomodate bicyclists. There are a few meandering shared-use pathways for pedestrians and  bicyclists, but they're clearly designed for the casual recreational rider and walker, not for people who want to go from somewhere to somewhere else under their own power.

Local governance is also privatized, and it matters. Homeowners belong to the "proprietary" that substitutes for local government, but renters don't. Some public amenities which would normally be public, such as community pools and local elections, are restricted to land-owners. Other public amenities most citizens take for granted, such as libraries, post offices, governmental offices and social service agencies are simply missing. We do have a public safety office, but it closes at 5:30 p.m. There is no public transportation whatsoever; if you don't have a car, you simply can't get there.

Formal taxation is low, of course, but de facto taxation isn't, in part because the "proprietary" spends an inordinate amount of effort on beautification efforts tax-supported local governments cannot dare to attempt. But of course, those beautification efforts aren't free; rather, their cost is built into the fees paid directly and indirectly to the proprietary ... but without the oversight that is normal with public entities.

Overall, the residential areas are well planned. The neighborhoods are attractive, in a sterile, plasticized way. Small, tasteful shopping areas abound ... but there's a frustrating limitation and a stultifying sameness to them; they're populated just about exclusively by chain stores, but with whole sectors of the consumer-oriented retail industry are missing. It is impossible, for instance, the buy shoes, clothing, pots and pans, bicycles, hobby goods, books, electronics and a whole lot more without jumping into your car and driving at least ten miles to shop in "normal" communities across the county line.

If this is the privatized future that neocons desire, come visit it here. I have seen their future, and I don't like it.

Sultry night

I meant to get ice cream and forgot. Tonight would be a good night for it too.

Ooh baby, ooh baby

We school bus drivers use the radio to keep in touch. It's pretty amateurish; one hears "10-4" used far more often and far less precisely than one should, but it is useful.

And sometimes funny.

Mostly it's for supervisors and the garage passing along information. Or central dispatch looking for drivers who can fill in for other drivers whose buses have broken down, or who are unexpectedly caught in a traffic jam, or who belatedly called in sick. Or drivers who have significant problems to report.

"Base, this is bus 165; my air pressure is falling so I've parked on the side of Edgewater near ...."

"Base, this is bus 279; I've got a Kindergartner whose parent wasn't there so I''m returning him to his school ...."

"Bus 82, this is the garage. Please bring your bus in for servicing before 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday."

"This is base; can any driver second load this p.m. out of Pinebrook elementary for bus 55?

Alas, there are inevitably those drivers who love the sound of their voices who clutter the airwaves with messages we really don't need to hear. "This is bus 497: there's a styrofoam cup on in the right lane of the County Parkway; use extreme caution." Okay, that's an exaggeration, but not by much. I'm often amused (and sometimes nettled) by the superfluous messages that blast though our squawk boxes.

Still, it's a useful tool, the only way to tie together a herd of several hundred yellow boxes roaming around the county's neighborhoods.

But the real joy is that some of the transmissions are just plain funny. My favorite which came deliciously with no warning and no attribution: "I love you, but you still have to move."

Washington joins the list; why doesn't everybody?

Yesterday the state senate in Washington passed a bill which would permit same-sex couples to marry. Passage is apparently expected in the Assembly, and the governor has indicated that she will sign the bill. Washington will then join Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia is permitting such marriages.

However, opponents in Washington are already threatening a referendum to overturn the law, although a similar effort in 2009 failed to overturn a civil union law. Prominent among these opponents is the Catholic Church.

This reminds me of a discussion a friend and I had last week. An acquaintance of hers had fulminated against gay marriage, and she was dismayed that her defense hadn’t been a coherent as she would have wished.

In light of these two events, I thought I would commit my thoughts to paper, or at least electrons flitting about the web.

Let me start by noting that I have a number of close friends and relatives who collectively personify all four letters of LGBT, and I've thought about related issues quite a lot.

It seems to me that there's a good chance my friend’s acquaintance was blurring the distinctions between marriage as a legal institution and marriage as a religious institution. That's easy to do, since for most couples the two occur simultaneously; most American couples are married in religious ceremonies officiated by clerics empowered by both the church and the state to perform both functions, and from then on, everybody views the couple as being simply "married."

However, the two aspects of marriage are quite different. The preeminent earthly aspect is, of course, the secular one, as marriage is a unique contractual agreement that conveys specific legal rights and privileges (e.g., preferential tax and inheritance rights). Granted, a civil union law can conceptually be tweaked to fully mimic the legal rights of marriage, but what's the purpose? If the goal is to have exactly parallel legal ramifications, why maintain the separate status? That makes no sense. And at a gut level, my friend’s interlocutor probably realizes this ... and since he perceives a difference, he wants the legal definition to reflect something of the antipathy he feels for "gay marriage."

But of course, civil union laws do not fully mimic marriage laws. The federal "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) and other federal statutes prevent individuals in civil unions (or even same-sex marriages legally sanctioned by states) from enjoying the same rights and privileges of marriage (again, for example, federal tax treatment, and for federal employees, insurance benefits). As was the case with public schools in the era of legal segregation, "separate" is in fact unequal.

There is another, more abstract issue here, as well. Formal marriage carries an imprimatur that is socially valuable. Let's face it: marriage means that we accept without reservation the right of two individuals to engage in behavior which would in any other context be subject to some opprobrium. Further, spouses enjoy a higher social status than “partners.” Granted, standards are more lax now than they once were, but members of a couple desiring to be wed wants the world to recognize their partner as their spouse, and any form of civil union less than marriage fails on that measure.

What then is the basis of the opposition to legally recognizing same-sex marriages? Some argue that the purpose of marriage is procreation, but of course that is a specious argument since our laws and our culture happily embrace the marriages of heterosexual couples unable or unwilling to have children. (For example, who would criticize my 90 year old father if he were to wed his 81 year old "girlfriend"? Or the marital plans of a much younger friend who is sterile because of her endometriosis?)

The other major argument is that homosexual marriage is "wrong." That might be a convincing argument if there was societal unanimity on the subject (as there is, say, with murder or pedophilia), but clearly there isn't. The views of large numbers of citizens who view such marriage as acceptable are just as valid as those who oppose it, with the difference that the former group would not prevent the latter from exercising the right, while the latter group would prevent gays in the former group from doing so.

The core of the argument that it is wrong has religious roots, yet even there we have a good deal of diversity of opinion. A number of faith communities feel very strongly that same-sex marriage is wrong. I have no problem with that. But if we acknowledge the relevance of that perspective, we must also acknowledge the relevance of the opposing perspective, since a goodly number of faith communities and non-faith based value systems embrace the concept, and many of them celebrate such marriages. Examples include the United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalists (Unitarians), most meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and Reform Judaism.

That being the case, it is inappropriate to cloak within the law the perspective of one or more faith communities to the exclusion or denial of the beliefs of other faith communities and non-faith based value systems. It is inconsistent with our standard of the separation of church and state, for example, for the Catholic Church to use the power of the state to enforce its concept of marriage and prevent the Unitarian Universalists from celebrating theirs.

In other words, the state has no valid reason to limit this class of contractual relationship to heterosexuals, and any attempt to do so should be seen as violating the first amendment's establishment clause, as well as the fourteenth amendment's standard of equality before the law.

This is not to say that homosexual marriage is "right" any more than it is "wrong," since both are value judgments held by members of our society. It is merely to say that in this pluralistic society, such value judgments should be reserved for private entities and not be given the force of law by the state. Nor should one faith seek to use the law to codify its perspective to the negation of the perspectives of other faiths.

However, were same-sex marriage be universally permitted, non-state institutions would still be free to continue to hold such values as they choose, and if they wished to prohibit extending the religious aspects of marriage to homosexual members of their own communities, they could continue to refuse to perform such marriages. If the Catholic Church, for example, refused to marry same-sex couples, that would be fine. Marriage-minded gay or lesbian couples within religious communities prohibiting same-sex marriages would then be able to change religions if religious marriage were still a goal, and they would be free to obtain a state-sanctioned marriage (e.g., before a judge) if they so wished.

Of course, there is yet another argument raised in opposition to same-sex marriage, that somehow such marriages would weaken the traditional institution of marriage between men and women. But that argument is specious; in no way would the ability of two men to marry or two women to marry in any way impinge upon the right or ability of a man and woman to marry. And if one needs proof of this assertion, one merely has to look at those states already permitting same-sex marriage. In all of them, straights still marry straights, and nobody objects.

Bus 1, Car 0

Driving these big yellow boxes, one thinks about Sir Isaac Newton a lot. When accelerating, when stopping, when turning, when approaching kids on the sidewalk. You know, mass and inertia, objects in motion and all of that. Most of all, though, one thinks about 17 tons versus one ton. As in, collision.

Luckily, although the thought of it is constantly with them, most school bus drivers never have to face the reality. The opportunity is out there, to be sure; all bus drivers have their share of stories about near misses, of car drivers somehow failing to see them ("we're big, we're yellow, and we have lights all over us; what's hard to see?") and pulling out in front of them, or changing lanes into them, or running stop signs or traffic lights. And all too often, the cars' drivers are on their cell phones. (How else to understand overlooking our behemoths?) Scary stories, but thankfully mostly near misses.

A week ago Tuesday the worry became my reality.

I was driving on a 4 lane divided expressway.  I had just picked up the last of my middle-schoolers and was headed for their school to let them off. I had turned on to the expressway only a quarter mile earlier, so I was still accelerating, probably doing 30-35 m.p.h. on my way up to the 45 m.p.h. limit. As I approached a minor intersecting two lane residential street, I saw a car decelerating towards the stop sign, i.e., behaving in way that looked pretty ordinary, but then it started accelerating into Parkway, and directly into my path!  I swerved to the left, thinking at the time that the other driver still had time to stop if they had my now-vacated right lane to use.  (Fortunately I knew the left lane was empty, so swerving was a relatively safe option.)  Instead, the car kept coming and plowed into the middle of my bus's side. 

It was amazing how quickly it all happened.

I heard the crash more than felt it, and fortunately my control of the bus was never in doubt.

I immediately pulled back into the right lane and parked against the curb. My first thought was for the kids, of course, but they all seemed to be okay.  Still, I asked, and they all said they were okay.  So then I radioed our central dispatch (which alerts police and rescue), and set out my reflective triangles.  Before I finished that task, the police and an ambulance arrived (we were only a quarter mile from their shared regional headquarters). 

It was only then that I looked at the car that hit us.  It was about 150 yards behind me, and its entire front end had been destroyed -- utterly destroyed; even the engine was damaged and deformed.  (Fortunately, the passenger compartment was perfectly intact, and the driver's only injury came from the airbag.)  The car was a fairly new Nissan Versa.

By comparison, the bus suffered little damage.  One tire and its rim were ruined, and there was sheet metal damage along the side, but all of that was below the level of the main frame and there was no structural damage at all.  Once the wheel and tire were changed, it drove normally.

Score: Bus 1, car 0!

I really don't think I could have done anything differently.  There was too little time to stop, or even decelerate significantly; maneuvering to avoid was the only real option. Had I not swerved, I might have run into the side of the car, especially if I had tried braking, in which case there would have been a good chance that I would have killed the driver, or at least seriously injured her.

There were no skid marks from the car.  Frankly, I don't think the driver saw me until the bus flashed in front of her.  My guess - and it's only that, a guess - is that she was on a cell phone.  Like I said, she was coming from a minor residential street while I was on a major one - it's the sort of intersection where a driver on the lesser road just naturally expects to stop for the fast-moving, heavy traffic of the major road.  If she wasn't distracted by a cell phone, it's hard to imagine why she did what she did.  I mean, it's not as if a 40 foot long, 17 ton brick-shaped yellow box with lights on is hard to miss!

As for my reaction ... some of the other bus drivers asked me later if I was OK (in the sense of not being so rattled I couldn't work, or some such) but it didn't affect me much at all, really.

It all happened faster than I could react emotionally (e.g., I was initially too busy to feel anything, and the adrenaline hit well after the fact). After it was over and I thought back on it, I couldn't see anything I did that I wished I could have done differently, nor did I have any regrets about what I did do.  So it wasn't upsetting or scary or anything like that. 

It did help, I think, that when the police and my boss arrived on the scene and surveyed the scene, they were very matter-of-fact and didn't criticize or comment on my actions directly or indirectly at all.

It made for an interesting morning. Besides, one student aboard told me she didn't really want to go to first period math anyway.

Citizen drivers

A couple of the aspects of school bus driving I like most are the drivers' implicit assumption of equality, and the utter lack of competitiveness between them. I've never seen anything like it, anywhere else.

We're a diverse lot. Broadly speaking, we fall into two groups: those who started driving school buses before the lesser depression hit in 2007, and those who came after. The first group is primarily made up of people - mostly women - from blue collar families or the lower rungs of the service sector. By in large, they never went beyond high school, and most of them lived in the county when it was still rural, and both wages and land prices were low. Their number includes both whites and African-Americans.

It's a little more complicated for the newer drivers. Many of us are victims of the recession, mostly middle-aged, who lost our jobs as the economy plunged; this group tends to be college educated, and a lot of us have advanced degrees. Many of us were employed in professional careers; there are a lot of former IT professionals among us and a lot of building contractors, but many other fields are represented too, from graphic design to retail management. Then, too, a lot of the newer drivers are "new wave" immigrants, from the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, and both South and Southeast Asia ... and many of them are well educated too, having left behind various professional careers when the emigrated.

There's certainly a rich mixture of accents over our radio!

What's more interesting, and profoundly satisfying, is that I've never - never - seem or heard anything to suggest that any one of us harbors any dislike or distrust or any other evidence of group-related, ethnic, national or racial bias against anybody else. Clearly, we see ourselves as a community of equals, involved in and dedicated - yes, truly dedicated - to the same goal.

That respect for each other leads directly to our cooperative approach to our work. During those times when we're sitting idle, waiting for the students to be released to our buses, we gather together just as bus drivers, chatting about the usual inanities of life or discussing work-related issues. We live the same lives, at least at work, doing the same job, facing the same problems, employed in an experience more completely shared than I've seen in any other working environment. When one of us encounters a problem - say, a traffic obstruction, or a mechanical problem, or an sudden illness, or any other personal or work-related problem - we all pitch in ... and we do it not for money or some other tangible reward, but just to help out.

I should add that the lack of bias spills over to our attitude about the kids we carry: they, too, are a diverse lot, but although I've head many a driver complain about poor student behavior, I've never heard any such complaint tinged with a whiff of bigotry.

I'm finding that school bus drivers are a great community of people, and I'm proud to be among them. And happy, too.

Not your hospital room

Today's New York Times has a story about hospitals catering to the ultra-rich which is definitely worth reading, for it raises some very disturbing questions beyond the simple arrogance of the 99.9% and their contempt and disdain for the rest of us.

The article describes how many hospitals have established special wings for the very wealthy with butlers, gourmet menus ("mushroom risotto with heirloom tomatoes", or maybe lobster tails) prepared by dedicated chefs, plush furniture (antique mahogany to contemporary sleek, with polished marble in the bath), sophisticated entertainment systems, fancy linens ... and direct access to the best physicians.

Yet these are the hospitals which also serve the poor, and the ordinary schmucks who think they're "covered" by health insurance. These are the same hospitals where regular patients, the article reports, can be stuck in the emergency room for three days, or lie in pain on a gurney for two days without even a bed pan.

It isn't the elitism or even the financial cost of this that is most bothersome, but the opportunity costs. To the extent that hospitals pamper the ultra-rich, they are de-emphasizing their care for the rest of us, whether they admit it or not. Resources which could and should be going to improve the care for the entire patient load are being siphoned off to pamper the very wealthy, and preserve their "splendid isolation" from the "common people."

Two lines in this story really stand out: New York-Presbyterian statement that it "is dedicated to providing a single standard of high quality care to all of our patients” when they obviously aren't (haven't we long known that the patient's state of mind matters a lot?), and the one ultra-rich patient's comments that she feels “perfectly at home here — totally private, totally catered,” with “a primary-care physician who also acts as ringmaster for all [her] other doctors," so she sees "no people in training — only the best of the best.” The converse is perfectly true: everybody else gets a lesser level of care.

Is it any wonder that 99% of us are finally starting to resist the tenth of one percent?

To have been on the mountaintop

In the hope we never forget why we have a holiday tomorrow, nor why it matters today, tomorrow, and forever ....

In memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., and more important, his work, I offer these links to his final speech, the one popularly known as his "Mountaintop Speech." He gave it the night before his assassination, speaking in support of striking sanitation workers of Memphis, Tennessee. It is memorable for it captures well his views on non-violence; on the importance of economic freedom, economic injustice and economic rights; and on history and his role in it. The speech is also known for his prophetic view of his own mortality, so cruelly realized the next day.

The text of the speech, from (quite fittingly) the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, AFSCME: “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A video of the speech, from the series Great Speeches, volume 6th, published by the Educational Video Group, and to be viewed for educational purposes only: Martin Luther King, Jr: "Mountaintop" speech full length.

DWT

Waiting for a left turn signal, heading north waiting to turn west. Signal turns; I've got the green arrow. Same for the line of cars headed in the opposite direction.

Car southbound jumps forward as I begin my turn; my guess is that the driver saw the cars to his immediate left starting up so he hit the gas too. Problem, of course, is that he still had the red, and my big yellow box was starting to turn across his bow.

I hit the brakes hard. Also hit the horn hard. The guy stops, fully in the intersection. I look at him, but he's not looking at me or around at the rest of the traffic. No, his attention immediately returns to the electronic device cradled in his lap. Texting.

Personally, I'd rather he'd been drinking a beer. Then at least other drinkers might think, "There but for the grace of God ...." But I doubt that many cell phone users would see the connection, even if the safety stats are alarmingly similar.

Brrrrr

I like school bus driving. I really do. Okay, the pay is lousy, but I like the job.

But there is one aspect of it I hadn't foreseen, and which at times makes that old office job seem awfully inviting: cold.

Cold, as in 14 degrees Fahrenheit.*

Which is what it was the other morning, when I arrived to prepare my bus for the day's schedule. Of course, that was before dawn, but dawn didn't bring much help; the thermometer reached only to 28 by the afternoon.

Worse, the heater in my bus is anemic. Running full blast, it didn't raise the inside temperature enough to make me think I could remove my gloves until the final run of the day, and it didn't feel even vaguely comfortable until I had dropped off my last kid for the day. And no, I never removed my parka. I was chilly all day. Very chilly.

I know, it could be worse. I could be our roving mechanic, working all day outside (and often under buses trying to thaw out frozen brake lines, or swinging a wrench to replace a frozen stop sign actuator). Or have any one of a number of other jobs that require one to be outdoors all day in all types of weather.

On the other hand, I could be in an office, where cold days mean 72 F (and hot, 78). Has a nice sound to it, y'know? Granted, back then I worked for a malevolent tyrant whose only saving grace was blinding incompetence. But I never came home chilled to the bone ....


________________________________
* Yes, I could say -10 Celsius, and Celsius really does makes a lot more sense. But using a positive number makes it sound warmer, or at least not quite so cold. And 28 definitely sounds better than minus two. The time to go metric is the summer, when 40 Celsius sounds so much better than 104.