Though some people were lucky enough to never have to set foot on a school bus – those who lived close enough to walk, or whose mothers stayed home and dropped them off/picked them up every day – the rest of us spent more than our fair share of time fending for ourselves, no seatbelts and minimal adult supervision, to and from school.
These 15 people have some pretty wild memories, though, and I’m definitely here for it.
15. How to manage kids, 101.
Leroy. High school. We named our bus driver Leroy. 1996. Before Leroy Jenkins. This ride or die mother f’r would not speak. He pulled up in his bus, opened the swing arm, glared at us, waited, closed the swing arm. Waited. Once we were seated he would drive. Not a word, ever. We drank, we smoked, we..
What finally broke him was a fight. Leroy pulled his bus over and got out of his seat. Standing In the aisle Leroy said “That’s enough”. The entire bus went silent.
Leroy was the man.
14. His name really says it all.
It was the late 70’s, I think I was in 7th grade. Our bus driver was a very cool guy everyone called Animal. The bus was an old one with a stick shift and clutch. Last day of school, Animal drives the bus to a nearby park, and instructs all of us to the back of the bus.
We all pile up in the last 3 or 4 rows of seats, and he revs the engine and pops the clutch. The guy was popping wheelies in a school bus. Rumor has it he was banging the girl’s gym teacher too. Good times.
13. Watershed moment.
We had a Leroy. When middle school ended we had a celebration with water balloons, shaving cream, kid stuff. On the last middle school bus ride home, I decided to mess around with Leroy. Getting ready to go down the steps off the bus, I turned and got Leroy right in the shoulder with a water balloon and flashed him a bright smile.
True to his nature, he didn’t say a word, but damn if he didn’t come out of that bus after us and chase us down for 1/4 mile – in silence. He finally stopped, I think because he realized there were still about 40 kids on the bus.
That was the last time I ever messed with a bus driver.
12. Not all memories are weird.
My siblings and I went to a small private school that was about a half an hour from home. We were the only kids on the bus that went to that school, the rest got dropped off at a public school first, and we were the last off at night.
Needless to say we spent more time with the driver, Tom, then the other kids did. He favored us.
After all the other kids got off, he’d let us move around the bus, sweep the floor, or pick the radio station. At Christmas time he would share his treats that the other kids gave him as gifts. He was awesome. I’ll always remember Tom the bus driver.
11. This makes me want to cry.
When some goth kids wrote “Pig Bitch” on the back of my book bag. I walked around middle school that entire day without knowing.
What they didn’t realize is I couldn’t afford a new book bag. I had to have someone draw a puppy over it.
10. Down to eight lives I guess.
Waiting for the bus with a bunch of other kids in front of my apartment complex, saw a tabby cat get completely murked by a passing car. Front wheels hit the cat, the cat got flung up against the wheel well, hit the ground, then got smacked by the muffler.
The driver immediately stopped and got out as the cat sprinted away. I figured the cat went off and died somewhere.
After school that day, I went with a friend of mine over to the house of a friend of his, whom I didn’t know. There I saw a tabby cat that looked identical to the one that got smoked in the street earlier. I asked him “Is this your cat?”
He replied “Yeah she got hit by a car today but she seems ok”.
9. Oopsie.
I was in 5th grade going home from school. One of the kids in the year below me decided once he get off the bus, that it would be a great idea to moon all the kids still on the bus.
Pulled his pants down too far, and everyone got an eyeful of his junk, including the bus driver.
He got in big trouble with the school and got teased for ages after that.
8. Some things just stick with you.
Not sure why this stuck with me but this was during the cooler months that you would just crack the windows a bit to get fresh air. We would play “football” (triangle paper kind) by “kicking” it back and forth. I kicked it one time and it went out the window. The window only open far enough that it could barely slide through on the side.
It flew BACK into the bus 7 windows down, also through a window that was barely open enough to have it fit through. Hit a guy in the face. Was extremely bizarre.
7. That’s definitely something.
Had to teach a kid why sticking your middle finger up at someone is considered inappropriate and offensive because I was a patrol and was supposed to stop him from doing that. Unfortunately, I didn’t know WHY it was offensive other than that it was, so I finally had to just tell him to ask his parents and not to do it in front of me ever again.
Also I went home with my friend a couple of times and the year that the cicadas were out in full force, there was this one dude who rode on her bus who would collect money from people daring him to eat a cicada. He did this every day for like two weeks and by the end of it people would refuse to pay him. I think he just wanted to eat the cicadas but needed an excuse to do it.
6. That is A Day.
Some kid in the back of the bus was being harassed by his bully. My school district didn’t really do shit about bullies. The kid being bullied was sitting three to a seat with his legs in the aisle, and the bully was sitting by one of his friends, in the aisle across from the kid he was messing with. The bully decided to start pushing the kids leg. Before it was verbal, but now it was physical. Kid told bully to stop. Bully mocked him and did it again. Kid then punched the bully in the nose, breaking it and causing this huge amount of blood to leak from it.
By now the bus has stopped at some bus stop. The kid gets his stuff and gets off at the bus stop that’s a few ahead of his. The second he’s off he starts running and going a different route to his house. The bus driver was unaware of what happened until someone yelled for the bus driver to call someone because the bully’s nose wouldn’t stop bleeding. So she calls someone while the bully is calling his mom crying.
So we get the police to show up, his mom, other kids have called their parents because at this point we’ve been at a standstill for 30 + minutes, and the principal. We don’t know who called the police. So they, along with the principal are asking who did it and to confess. And we are all like “we don’t know” of course we did know but why would we tell on our hero? The principal and police are talking and they think the kid is still on the bus.
We then say, “oh, he got off we don’t know where he went or who he was” the principal and police look at the bus driver who shrugs because she didn’t realize what was going on until it was too late. We spent two hours on that hot bus because of it but I couldn’t even be mad. My middle school bus was wild.
5. Once in a lifetime.
One time this kid Dana, who looked identical to Donkeylips from Salute Your Shorts (just look it up), was dared to drink an entire room temperature 2 liter bottle of coke before we got to his stop.
This kid chugged the entire bottle down like an absolute champion. At almost the instant his face could form a smug grin of satisfaction from a job well done, he proceeded to barf a borderline fountain of foamy sticky soda all over two dozen terrified kids on the bus. It’s as if his entire stomach was filled with rolls of Mentos, which was possible considering the candy was at its commercial peak at the time.
I mean the force of this thing could have put out a house fire. His arch reached over like four rows of seats and was sprayed wildly back and forth like a diabetic sprinkler system as he struggled to reign control from this carbonated demonic nightmare.
The bus driver had to stop the bus to attend to the frightened children, and made a short but sincere effort to pat dry those poor souls caught in ground zero with government grade paper towels. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and I’m afraid I may never again.
Well done, Dana.
4. Bless.
This is almost 30 years ago. My buddy and me were VERY big Star Wars fans and this was our first year taking the bus. We would sit behind the driver every day and whenever his little stop sign activated, a small red light on his dashboard would flash.
Every time this happened one of us would reach past him, pointing and yell “What’s that flashing?!” reliving the scene from episode IV in the Millenium Falcon.
We did this every day for months. Driver never asked why or asked us to stop. I’m sure he’s long dead and often wondered what the f*ck was wrong with us.
3. I think she’s lucky it didn’t break her neck.
in grade school a girl with really long hair was sitting next to an open window and her hair got snagged by a tree limb. ripped a chunk of scalp off her head about the size of a tennis ball.
Doctors let it heal up and she had surgery later to stretch her scalp to cover it. it ended up looking like a T scar on the top right corner of her head. you’d never notice it unless she parted her hair to show you.
also, someone later that day ended up finding the chunk of her scalp and hair still tangled on the tree branch, but it was well after she went to the hospital so they didn’t try to sew it back on.
2. Maybe he was just tired.
The bus driver when I was in early grade school was named Ross. My neighborhood was the first stop in the mornings, so we were always the first people on the bus. One day, he picked us up and somehow forgot about all the other stops (there were 10-15 total).
He gets like a block away from the school when he realizes there’s only like 8 kids on the bus. He turns around and goes back through every stop, but all the other kids have already gotten rides with their parents because we were over 30 minutes behind schedule by this point. Ended up being almost an hour late to school.
As a kid, it was hilarious.
As an adult, I think Ross did drugs.
1. Talk about awkward.
One time my friend pushed me out of the seat and I fell and faceplanted on a guy’s d*ck.
I think my bus was pretty tame compared to these.
What’s your strangest or just most memorable moment from riding the bus? We’d love to hear about it in the comments!