Fielding Questions About How Big the Bus I Get to Drive for Work is

It’s been a little over a month since I started my new job in senior living, and I’m officially finished with the training period. On Wednesdays I get to drive the big bus for group outings.

Driving the big bus makes me feel like a character in Richard Scarry’s Busytown, alive with purpose, and surrounded by co-laborers who manage to unite both ease and zeal in their activities of daily living. Or like a happy version of the sad butler from The Remains of the Day, where I am married to my professional duties, instead of to Emma Thompson.

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From The Chatner archives in 2022: “Now You Work in Busytown.”

There is a sign outside of Busytown:

It says, ‘Come to me, all who labor and

are heavy laden.” Congratulations.

You got the job. To want the job is to

get the job. Labor passes away but

work remains, and Busytown is always busy.

Busytown is full of love and thunder.

Here you have been assigned to Huckle Cat.

So now be best friends. Now you are fellow

laborers in Christ. God’s field. God’s building.

All Corinthians, all turned to the wheel,

All Busytown turning. Teach Patrick Pig

to speak. They all really loved you in there.

I’m serious. You got the job. It’s yours.

Do you want to fly the applecopter?

Done. Lowly Worm would step aside for you.

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For a long time I had been looking for a day job that would:

1. Provide me with health insurance and

2. Allow me the mental freedom to write after-hours

The last time I had a day job — writing an advice column for five years — I had a lot of fun but often found myself sort of “written out” at the end of each week. Worse still, after the fifth year I found myself scraping the bottom of the barrel of my own experiences. This is bad enough for an advice columnist but even worse for a novelist, so I decided to quit. Now I have a job where I get to run around all day doing errands for people I know personally, which is an ideal job for a novelist, because it gets you away from the computer and lets you rebuild your supply of interactions with people outside of your immediate social circle.

The only real danger is that of being tempted to sell out your daily experiences into a Tuesdays With Morrie-style account of inspiration; the only real defense against such a temptation is never to write about the individual people you work with. But I can tell you about the bus, and that with a right good will.

A lot of my friends have been asking me how big the bus is. I have assembled the most regular questions I have gotten about the big bus lately here, that future inquirers might be able to access all the necessary information at once.

FRIENDS: Is it true you get to drive the big bus for work?

DANIEL: You have heard aright. I have successfully completed the necessary training, and am now a confirmed driver of the big bus.

FRIENDS: How big is the big bus?

DANIEL: Let me put it this way. If the bus were any bigger, I would need a commercial driver’s license.

FRIENDS: Meaning…?

DANIEL: Meaning I can transport ten people, including myself, and no more.

FRIENDS: Does the big bus beep when you put it in reverse?

DANIEL: It does. With a satisfying depth of sound, too.

FRIENDS: And is there a button you can press to open the accordion doors?

DANIEL: There is. I can open and close the accordion doors with the slightest movement of my finger. Both admitting and denying egress and ingress for passengers is as child’s play, to me.

FRIENDS: And you’re able to make left-hand turns in it and everything? You go up hills, and so on?

DANIEL: With safety, and with aplomb.

FRIENDS: You drive around the neighborhood in the big bus? Do you see people you know?

DANIEL: I trundle all around the neighborhood, driving the big bus, safely and with aplomb, and I sometimes see people I know through the window.

FRIENDS: But you cannot safely wave at them while you are driving, no?

DANIEL: It is the one heartbreak that comes with driving the big bus. I cannot honk and wave at people I know while I am driving the big bus, not even when I am stopped at a red light.

FRIENDS: Come, let us speak of happier things. There is a lift at the back of the bus which you have been trained to successfully operate, is there not?

DANIEL: There is.

FRIENDS: Does it make a satisfying noise, when you press the button that folds and unfolds the necessary machinery?

DANIEL: It does. But I maintain the strictest of demeanors during the lift’s operation. I may choose to privately enjoy the noise, in the course of my duties, but I am a professional, and keep my enjoyment to myself.

FRIENDS: So driving the big bus is going pretty well?

DANIEL: Pretty well.

FRIENDS: Better than, for example, your experience calling Bingo?

DANIEL: I would not say that my experience calling Bingo has been unsuccessful. I have learned a great deal about how not to call Bingo. But I would not call it unsuccessful.

FRIENDS: But you have received complaints about your Bingo calling, have you not?

DANIEL: I have received suggestions. I have received particular requests. Particular requests, earnestly made, and I have made it my business to carry out those requests. To return to the bus—

FRIENDS: Isn’t it true that just last week one of the Bingo players said “Bingo used to be fun” to their companion at the end of the hour?

DANIEL: I didn’t catch the context in which the remark was delivered. They could have been talking about a number of different elements of the game. Bingo is a complicated game.

FRIENDS: But regardless of context, you would not call such a remark evidence of success?

DANIEL: The thing about the big bus is that it unites a sense of gaiety with a solemn moral code. When there are a lot of people on a bus, they want to have a good time together; when you have a lot of passengers on your bus, it’s your job to deliver them safely to their destination. When I drive the big bus, I am the careful steward of joy. And I am going to get the hang of Bingo eventually.

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