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Like any ‘80s and ‘90s kid with a long school bus ride, I learned to live by “bus law.”
Older kids in the back; young ones up front. Backpacks can’t save a seat forever, but throw-up can. Don’t mouth off to the moody kid in a jean jacket or you might take a skateboard across the head. And everyone knew — even the kids who ate boogers — that if food touched the floor it was gone forever.
If Bob was driving, you rode yellow lightning, arriving to school before teachers finished their last smoke in the parking lot. Sleeping kids lost their glasses against the window on tight turns. What happened behind him was not Bob’s concern, until the screams turned dire. Then, like Jack Palance in his most dastardly role, he’d spin around and shout, “Knock it off!” The bus would hush to funeral silence for about 12 seconds before anarchy resumed.
Perhaps “bus law” has changed since then, but we always got to school. Mom and Dad never had to wonder how, which is good because there were years when our family car was not a reliable backup plan.
Public schools have provided busing to rural Minnesota schools for more than 100 years, including a few horse and carriage operations back in the 1890s.
