How Some Things Never Change

In business situations it's called "empire building" when someone owns a process, and holds it with such a tight grip that they won't let anyone else be a part of that process; they hunger for as much power as they can muster up, in their limited role. They have a similar situation in the world of elementary school...however, there it's called being the "mean-old-bus-lady".

I went on a field trip with my son yesterday to...it doesn't matter to the story where we went, I guess. But riding that school bus for that half hour each way really brought me back to being a 9-year-old again. When the kids around me were goofing around, I was getting nervous for them--I mean really scared. I kept telling them to chill, to cool out, to mellow. If they didn't settle, I just knew the mean-old-bus-lady was going to catch them and eat them with some fava and a nice chianti.

What's weird to me: is the mean-old-bus-lady uniform. They don't wear traditional uniforms like the cops, military, or convicts. No, they wear the same uniform of the 50-year-old barfllys: the thick, matted mane of hair parted in the center, the gap in the teeth that's not a center gap but instead a gap off to the side by the "eye tooth"... But, the krux of the uniform, the essential element, is the snarled upper lip as you see them staring in your direction up through that crazy-wide mirror above the windshield. I know you remember getting stares through that mirror, you know the one, right next to the little mini fan hanging from the roof of the cab. I was watching her, and I know she was watching me; shit, I don't know how she drove at all without crashing -- as much time she spent staring into that mirror. She eyeballed up in that mirror as much if not more than she did watching the road. "GIRLS! THERE'S NO EATING OR DRINKING ON THE BUS!"..."BOYS, PUT YOUR REARS IN THE SEATS!"... It was all the same old shouts that I heard on the bus twenty something years ago. The green vinyl seats were still just as uncomfortable for an extremely-medium build guy like myself. The girls were still doing that hand-jive or whatever you call it -- "Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack...." and the boys were telling fish stories about their exploits in the video game world or or maybe with the class bullies. Though the lexicon may have changed slightly, otherwise it was exactly the same.

The experience made me take a new look at a lot of things around me, about how I think things have changed so much because of cell phones and HDTVs and computers...but when I look closely it's still all the same. People don't really change, what changes is just how they do the things they do. Bus drivers are still really mean, I think they'll always be pseudo-witches. Young teachers are still smokin' hot, I think they'll always give me a proper boner. And the school-yard bullies are still bullies, I think they'll always be buttheads, except I guess, now they use a keyboard and a cellphone to do their bullying.