The Big Yellow Bus

School Bus Pet Peeves: A Morning Meditation on Patience, Fury, and the Slow March of Childhood

If you’ve ever found yourself behind a school bus at 7:13 a.m., you already know: there are few earthly experiences that test the human spirit quite like the Morning Rounds.

A school bus does not drive a route.
It performs one.
Like a Broadway revival of Waiting for Godot—except with flashing lights and fluorescent backpacks.

The ritual begins innocently enough. You’re on your way to work, coffee in hand, feeling optimistic, maybe even human. And then you see it. The bright yellow behemoth. The flashing lights. The unmistakable silhouette of the Stop Sign Paddle of Doom unfolding like the wings of a great mechanical angel sent to destroy your schedule.

And then it begins:

Stop. Six feet. Stop. Six feet. Stop. Six feet.

It’s less a route and more an interpretive dance of inertia and despair.

But the real pièce de résistance?
The kids.

Look, we love kids. Kids are the future. Kids are wonderful. Kids deserve an education.

But in the mornings?

They walk to the bus as if they’re approaching the gas chamber at San Quentin.

One slow, resentful step at a time.
Hoodie up.
Shoelace untied.
Dragging their backpack like it contains the bones of their ancestors.

There is no urgency in the morning walk to the school bus. None. They move with the gentle, deliberate pace of monks in silent procession. And meanwhile, behind them, there’s you—going through all five Kübler-Ross stages of grief at each stop:

Denial: “It won’t be that bad today.”

Anger: “Why is he stopping again? The last house was RIGHT THERE.”

Bargaining: “If this kid moves at even a medium pace, I swear I’ll start volunteering somewhere.”

Depression: “This is my life now. This is where I live.”

Acceptance: “I will die on Route 9 behind Bus 17.”

Occasionally you get that one kid—the Morning Overachiever—who actually runs to the bus. This kid deserves a medal, a parade, and a full scholarship to anywhere. But he’s rare. A unicorn among the yawning masses.

The rest?
They’re trudging along like men walking to their parole hearing, and you’re stuck behind the bus, watching your ETA climb from reasonable to theoretical.

And the best part?
The bus finally gets moving—maybe hits 18 mph—and just when hope flickers, just when you think you’ve been freed…

The lights come on again.

Another stop.
Another child.
Another slow-motion shuffle toward compulsory education.

And you sit there thinking: Is this what Dante meant by the Ninth Circle?

But here’s the truth of it:
One day, sooner than we think, we won’t see those yellow buses anymore.
Won’t see the backpacks.
Won’t see the slow walks.
Won’t see the kids trudging off to a world they don’t yet understand.

One day, the annoyance becomes nostalgia.

But until then?

God help whoever ends up behind Bus 17 on a Tuesday.