Sid the Bus Driver

by Susan Weber

Back in grade school all the kids on Creekside Drive quaked in our Keds and Sneakers when we clambored into the giant yellow mean-mobile. Sid was as blunt and chubby as the snub-nose bus he drove. His belly vast as Santa Clause, his massive paws maneuvering the gears, his voice a pungent jeer across the distance to the back most seat. We had a love hate relationship with that bus.

On the one hand, we adored the sleek design. Engine in back, emergency hatch along the side, the rear seat stretching port to starboard. Any kid on earth would want a piece of that. We were the chosen onlys. There was but one such bus in all the jaundiced diesel fleet of school transportation.

On the other hand, there was Sid. His snarly, buzz cut, daily road rage puncturing our ear drums, shriveling our confidence. “Nobody move, shut your traps, you’re foggin’ up my windows with your lousy breath—how d’ya ‘xpect me to drive?” That’s a rough translation of the usual. Fogged up glass was among his most memorable talking points. Twice a day we endured the vile barrage in his chariot, a dreaded mobile prison for the under class. We became the faint of heart and mute of tongue, the coweringly tiny saints his temper morphed us into.

But school was not all terror. One night the PTA had a talent show, inviting all the families. Teachers and administrators took their turns transforming school auditorium to Vaudeville stage. The acts hadn’t scrimped on schtick or costume. Papier Mâché and poster paint were slathered on thick. We rolled in our seats when favorite teachers or the stodgy principal got up to play the fool. Belly laughs and snorts were ours to squander.

And then the grand finale. Like fireworks watchers yawning, anticipating home, by then we were more than spent. But still, when the top-hatted creature took the stage, we settled in to see what he could do. The outsized hat covered a man’s head and upper torso, arms disappearing in the haberdashery. Glasses had been painted on the skin around the nipples. Our startled gazes swooped down the long black smear that was the nose between rosy swirls of poster-painted blush. The belly’s dimpled navel, daubed with black, was rimmed with glossy red like puckered lips on a puffy, scraggle-bearded face. From the mystery man’s hips hung flaccid, miniature arms. A short tuxedo gussied up the legs. As we gaped and wondered, fife and drum music wafted from the wings.

On cue the flabby cheeks began to puff in and out to the music. The crowd sucked in a communal breath, needing time to wrap its mind around the tooting man. Then of one accord we laughed. Our loud unfettered gusto rose into the rafters, through the open windows, up and out to entertain the star struck night. We hooted and we caterwauled. We saw each other's faces, lips peeled back around our shiny teeth, and we laughed some more. Guffaws took caution to the bank and cashed it in for all the rights and privileges of free unobsequious girls and boys and moms and dads and babies. We gulped and spewed out merriment. We jostled and we warbled and we squealed. And when the music ended, and the whistler took his bow, and we’d stomped and whistled back at him, the house lights stammered and they blinked back on.

The performer tipped his torso from the big black hat. And there stood Sid. Sopped in perspiration, his bright eyes wet, laughing back at us. The wide world tilted on its spine and changed forever in the wild untethering of time.

Photo by Mfalcian CC BY-SA 4.0