Saturday, April 24, 2004

Dee Dee

When I was in elementary school, we had a bus driver named Dee Dee.  She was extremely good at what she did.  She’d play games with us, give out treats during the various holidays, and she looked good while doing it.  It was evident how proud she was of her job by how tidy she kept the bus and by how cheerful her demeanor from the first pick up in the morning, to the last drop off in the evening.

One day, I must have been in kindergarten or first grade, the brakes went out on the bus.  I don’t know many people regardless of how much training they’ve had in driving who’d have handled it as gracefully as Dee Dee did.  This was no small feat, mind you, as it wasn’t your typical suburban neighborhood with flat surface streets and perfectly straight streets with 90 degree intersections.  Nope, this was a winding mountain highway that snaked its way past dirt road turn offs and craggy cliffs. 

As anyone who has ever ridden a public school bus knows, there are no seat belts for the kids, just for the driver.  Dee Dee calmly told all of us to crouch down in our seats, and honestly, I don’t remember the words she used, but she made it seem more like it was a game of Simon Says than instructions that would save our lives.  I don’t remember being concerned in the slightest.  She then called out on the radio that she was going to need a replacement bus to come by our location as this bus wasn’t going to be able to finish the rounds that day.  This was said with the same mellow intent as a cat rolling over in a puddle of sunshine.  To this day I’m still amazed.

So there we are, barreling down a mountain in a yellow school bus filled with kids.  We have no breaks and no one except Dee Dee is aware of just how dire the situation could be.  What does she do?  She finds a relatively sandy spot in the hillside and _crashes the bus into the mountain_.  Not one of us was wildly thrown about or suffered from so much as a bump, bruise or scrape.  The angle and speed at which she hit caused it to be no more than a slightly jerky stop for us.

A few years later, Dee Dee had to retire.  Her knees were going bad from bus driving.  It was obvious she loved bus driving and she was by far the best bus driver I’ve ever seen.  She cried on the day she told us she was going to have to quit.  Most of us cried with her.  I don’t really know how much bus drivers get paid, but I’ll wager it isn’t even close to enough.  Even though most of us loved Dee Dee, it wasn’t as though we presented her with plaques or trophies every day.  I’ve never wanted to be a bus driver, and to this day, I can’t understand why anyone would want to, especially weighing the lack of tangible rewards.

Here’s the thing.  Dee Dee *did* want to be a bus driver.  She enjoyed it and she was good at it.  Maybe she wasn’t the _best_ bus driver in the whole world, I can’t really say.  However, she was good at it and she enjoyed it.  That’s what’s really important. 

This is a lesson I want to apply to my own life.  There’s no sense to me in trying to be “the best” because as my daddy used to say, “There will always be someone better.“  However, if I love what I do and I’m good at it, I’ll always be good at it and always love it.  The two go hand in hand.  If you enjoy doing something, you’ll want to do it more, and if you do it more you’ll get better at it and if you get better at it, you’ll enjoy it even more.

In the real world, it’s not about winning the race, it’s about handling the crashes with grace and poise.

In Other Years:

Andrea (2002)

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