56 Wet 3rd Graders and No Bus Driver

Today we took a field trip. It was an all-day, outdoor field trip. I had warned the kids ahead of time that since it had been raining for days and we would be outside, to dress accordingly as it would be very muddy. I got to test drive my new Target rain boots so I was excited.

Our day started out with our bus driver showing up at school to pick us up 15 minutes late so we arrived to our destination late. Great start. The skies looked menacing as we unloaded the bus and we were all uncertain what this outdoor field trip would bring. The bus driver seemed concern about our departure time and kept asking us if we thought we'd be leaving early on account of rain. I told her I really had no idea, so she gave me her cell phone number on a teeny, tiny piece of paper which I slipped in my back pocket.

We headed into the woods, traipsed through the mud, fell down into the creek, but the kids had a blast. They loved the mud. They even got to see a possum corpse, the highlight of my day. By the end of the adventure the kids were a few pounds heavier as their shoes were caked in mud.

We managed to finish 45 minutes ahead of schedule. Our scheduled departure time was 2pm. At 1:15pm we headed up to the bus. One assumed that where there was a bus, there was a bus driver. Not so. I reached in to my back pocket to get her phone number to call her, and of course, that itty bitty piece of paper was gone, probably somewhere on the miles of trail that we'd hiked that day.

Ironically, one of the parents had the bus company's number in her phone (for emergencies such as this?) so she got on the phone with them as the other teacher called the school. The company wouldn't give us her cell number but said that they'd gotten a hold of her and she was sick in the bathroom, not feeling good, she would be back shortly. We waited, and waited. The kids were running like mad monkeys. After 20 minutes we got worried. We checked the entire premises, every bathroom, no bus driver.

Then we called the company again and got a new story. She had gone to get food and would be back shortly. Huh? Which is it? Sure enough, at 5 til 2pm, nearly 45 minutes after we had arrived at the bus, the bus driver rolls up in a car with two other people. She was pissed at us, for what reason? Even if we weren't early, we were scheduled to leave at 2pm, so shouldn't she have been on the bus by at least 1:55pm? She seemed a little...out of it. I watched her in the mirror like a hawk the whole way to make sure she didn't run the bus off the road.

It made for a frustrating, restless, mind-boggling end of the day. We don't seem to have good luck with bus drivers though. Last year the bus driver handed me her cell phone and asked me to dial a number for her. Should bus drivers be talking on the phone while driving? The number punched in dialed, "It's Daddy". What?

The moral of this story? Don't lose the cell phone number they give you and stay off of bus 112.