No Comparison

There is no comparison between kids' behavior on a school bus and in a classroom. It's nothing like a CTA bus either, or like anything I've ever seen before. The only thing that kept me in that job for almost ten years was the challenge of trying to figure out what was wrong with those kids. Actually, most of them were alright, 10% of the kids caused 90% of the problems. There were some individuals who could disrupt a whole bus load all by themselves, on the days that they didn't ride it was a whole different environment. When I say "all by themselves" I don't mean it like it sounds, I mean that you take that one kid and put him in with 50 other kids, and there's trouble. One of my worst subjects was the first kid on the bus in the morning, and he was perfectly fine until more kids got on. The more kids that got on, the worse he became, and the worse he became, the worse the other kids became. I figured early on that it had something to do with mass hysteria, that it was contagious like a disease.

I talked to a lady bar tender one time who had studied psychology in college, and she told me that she learned a lot more about human nature tending bar than she ever did in school. Bar tenders generally interact with individuals or small groups, while a school bus driver deals with 50 kids at a time, and he is usually the only adult on the bus. The special ed busses had an aide who took care of the kids and all the driver had to do was drive, which was way easier. I found out later that some of my usual suspects were also special ed, but not special enough to qualify for the special bus, and they were some of the worst. We got no special training about how to deal with special kids, until I requested it once at our annual driver training refresher course, and we got some the next year. It was somewhat helpful, at least now I had a clue about what their problems were, but there wasn't much I could actually do about it. As near as I could tell, the state mandated programs were designed to maintain those kids in their present condition, not to cure or improve them.

What you said about death has plagued humanity since forever, which is probably why they developed religion. Well, the earliest religions probably were more focused on affecting things in this life but, as time went on, the focus was shifted to the afterlife. To you who do not believe in an afterlife, this life must indeed seem like "such a waste". I'm not sure if I believe in an afterlife or not, there is no way to prove it until you get there, and then it might be too late. I try not to worry about it too much, just keep putting one foot in front of the other for as long as I can. I doubt that my believing or not believing is going to change anything.

I first heard the phrase "post industrial economy" when I was working at the paper mill. This young lady manager was all enthused about it, claiming that the industrial age was being phased out and replaced by the information age, which she believed to be a good thing. I asked her what all the information was going to be about when we were no longer making anything. Would the computers gather around the water cooler and gossip about other computers?  She said that she didn't understand the question, and she was a college graduate. Years later, I heard a guy on PBS radio refer to our "post industrial welfare state", which pretty well sums it up.

I don't watch the news first thing in the morning, and not very much later in the day either. We have discussed this before, the only TV news I pick up is when I'm waiting for the weather and stock market reports. We don't get a newspaper anymore, and I hardly miss it. If it wasn't for the Institute and Wikipedia I wouldn't have a clue about what's going on in the world beyond the borders of Beaglesonia. Speaking of which, I looked up the delegate counts for the Republican candidates, and it's not exactly a runaway yet. Less than half the states have voted yet, and nobody has a clear majority. If it develops into a three or four way race at the convention they will have to take more than one ballot and, after the first ballot, all bets are off.