They hate to miss the bus.  It means I get to hold my kids hostage in the car for 20 minutes on the way to school and grill them about grades, their social lives, their grooming and many more annoying topics.  Missing the bus means I get to interrogate, and I have ways of making them talk. 

They also have to put up with so many of my Uncool Behaviors hoping beyond hope no one can see me in my bathrobe and fuzzy slippers behind the wheel with the Pomeranian riding shotgun.

So, I know they don't miss it on purpose.

On these special days, they re-appear at the front door, hangdog pissed and sweaty, because the Mr. Sadistic Public School Bus Driver, (who never shows up at the same time every day), gunned it, and sped away laughing while they sprinted vainly after the wheeled yellow tube of doom.

How'd you know he was laughing?

We saw his teeth!

They could actually see the demonic glint of his perfect white teeth as he rolled by, air brakes huffing and squealing in delight. He allows them to get within feet of the bus and opens the door partway tantalizing them with the promise of stopping.  Then he slams the door, pops a wheely and burns rubber.  My kids are left in a stinking diesel slipstream, his maniacal laughing wafting by. 

Adios, mi amigos!

It makes no sense at first, this cat and mouse game.  He stops patiently for the 300 pound teen mother who lives on the route as she is barrelling down the sidewalk in flip flops pushing her massively stuffed land yacht stroller. Not even sure if there is a baby in there.  He stops for the bespectacled wheezing allergy kid with the bird nest hair and the inhaler. He even stops for the Emo stoners who slouch their way up to the bus at a glacially relaxed sub-warp speed.  Not judging.  Kudos for going to school as showing up in the first place is real good start on becoming responsible adults.

I can only surmise that Mr. Sadistic Bus Driver thinks he is helping build even more character in my two unfairly and freakishly normal straight-A no rap sheet /criminal record, un-pregnant, non-knife-wielding sober pleasantly affable kids who do sports.

Or, he knows I won't sue him and appear on Channel 6  all indignant and weepy in my nightgown complaining that, "Ah'm just doin' this here lawsuit so it don't happ'n to anyone else's kids. And for the money so' Ah kin donate some to Reverend Bobby Earl down there at church and have mah long awaited varicose vein surgery that those bastards at Medicaire won't cover!" Springer? Springer? Bueller?

I really try not to show the kids my oppositionally defiant tendencies.  Nothing spins my wheels like propped up power-munching faux authority figures.  It is all I can do not to indulge out loud my current fantasy, but here goes: 

It would give me profound pleasure to track that bus halfway to school, jack it, climb into the driver's seat and spin gravel into the face of the now duct-taped supine driver left on the side of the road on a fire ant hill.  I would then give all those kids the ride of their short tawdry little lives!

That is after I give them my What the hell are you thinking? Cut the crap!  Quit being such dumbasses and wise up!  "talk".

Hey Mom you just ran over something.

Squirrel.

No, it was metallic.

Robot squirrel.