By: Brenda Wilkers
I woke with a panic. Oh no! It was light outside. I reached for my phone to check the time. Dead. Dead as a doorknob! My mind rushed back to the only time I was late to work was when I stayed up late and fell asleep watching the news when the horrific hurricane Helene was ravaging North Carolina and Tennessee. My phone had fallen off my nightstand and under my bed – not charging. With that familiar panic, I was late – again!
When you are late as a driver, you shift the universe at your school – and not in a good way. Drivers are on the radio desperately working together to try and pick up their kids and yours, parents are calling in, admin is radioing bus drivers trying to get an estimated time of arrival for the parents, elementary babies are waiting longer at their stops dealing with bus abandonment, and the grumpy rush of the parents who throw their kid in their vehicle to go wait in the carline which puts each individual family in a time crunch and a stressful emotional spin. Not a good start for anyone. On top of that, it’s a whole public fiasco played in real time over the radio with three other local school’s drivers listening, who share that same channel. It will definitely leave a mark on your ego! Only one late event and your reputation is pretty much poop. (Drivers don’t hold grudges — we’ve all made mistakes and help each other out.) So now you know why I panicked.
I’ve never gotten ready so fast in all my life. I believe it took me three minutes to throw on something, mostly what I wore yesterday, and a bra under my pajama shirt. As if I didn’t need any more reason to freak out, my phone was still very much dead. Charging in the car, it took about two minutes to finally get enough juice to turn on, and voice text the lead driver to apologize and ask her to start my bus to save me some time. I saw the three dots as I knew she was typing and was ready for her sarcastic reply. But what she typed stopped me in my tracks and deflated my panic in two words… “It’s Sunday.” Talk about a brain explosion!
How do you come back from that one? I was both relieved and horrified at the very same moment. Now my reputation as a driver took a different shift. Being late is a human excuse, but trying to go to work on Sunday and wake text your lead driver at 6:20 a.m. on a Sunday? That’s next level crazy — and she would LOVE to gossip to everybody with exaggeration and colorful words. I thought about making her a cake for Monday morning to request to keep this between us, but I decided to swallow my pride, take the hits, and laugh along while threatening to take a few days off for my mental health.
So when Monday morning rolled in, I was braced and ready. But as I pre-checked my bus, I received a phone call from her, my lead driver, the same one I was bracing for. “Girl, you done rubbed off on me! I slept in! Can you start my bus for me?”
I responded with a sympathetic, “Absolutely!” I finished up the conversation with one statement. “I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”
Our promise to keep our secrets among just the two of us was so deep and sincere that if we were standing face-to-face, we might’ve just spit in our hands with a handshake of forever silence about the unfortunate events of the last 24 hours.
Lord, thank you for the moments that keep us humble, on our toes, and ready to roll with the punches with laughter. I am in awe of the work you’ve done in my life because my reaction could have been angry, blame everything but me, and hold self-demeaning conversations in my head. I could’ve been the victim of a dead phone, desperate need of a mental break, and could have chosen to be in a horrible mood. Your work is evident, and I am forever grateful.
~Brenda Wilkers
