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.