I’d been driving the same clunky yellow school bus for fifteen years. Most mornings felt like déjà vu—the cold air biting at my fingers, the heater groaning awake, kids stomping aboard like a herd of tiny buffalo. But one brutally cold Tuesday morning changed everything. It started with a quiet sob drifting from the back of the bus, so faint I almost missed it. What I found there cracked something open in me that never closed.
My name’s Gerald. I’m 45, a school bus driver in a tiny town most people forget exists. I wake up before the sun, unlock the depot gate, climb into my old diesel beast, and get the heater going so the kids don’t freeze on the way to school. It’s not glamorous—my wife, Linda, reminds me constantly that it barely covers the bills—but this work is mine, and the kids make it meaningful.
That Tuesday morning, the cold was bone-deep. My fingers stung as I turned the ignition. I puffed warm air into my hands and climbed the steps, shaking off frost like a dog emerging from icy water.
“Alright, let’s move, soldiers! The air out here’s got teeth!” I hollered as the kids scrambled aboard.
Little Marcy, five years old with pigtails that practically had their own personality, planted her mittened fists on her hips. “Gerald, that scarf is a disgrace,” she announced.
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