a jinx is a jinx is a jinx?

so do i believe in jinxes? not still so sure, but if id do believe in the thrid time is a charm, then i should be relatively free from further problems with bus driving, at least enopugh to last me for some years... so i had a brake fire last night about an hour from the end of my run and in my home town to boot. i pulled into the lot and started to let people off and it was then that i noticed the unmistakable and indescribable smell thyat can only be burning brakes with the accompanying smoke wafting from the aluminum wheel and more importantly, the amber coloured falmes peeping their tiny heads through the venting holes of the wheel. i immediately had visions of a six figure bus, an eleven year old one, yes, perhaps, but an eleven year old bus creating a slag heap of steel, glass, aluminum and rubber. in the last day of training class, we were told in vivid detail that a bus is essentially, a pile of oily rags and gasoline waiting for the proper spark to reduce it to a raging fifteen minute pyre. pshaw! nothing like it could ever happen to me, i am sure that we all individually thought, nothing like it could ever happen...
with the passengers exiting the bus, i strategically placed myself in front of the offending burning wheel. 'what's that smell?' most of them said. oh, nothing, just get off the bus and stand as far away as possible. with dispatch called and the rescue bus sent for us, i got the helpful advice from the dispatcher that perhaps, if the brake were hung up, that i could back the bus up some and unjam it. well, the result was just a bit more serious than the cause, but i appreciated the help. it was then that i discovered that i could not, for the life of me and the further life of the bus, stand on my head and peer under a dark seat cushion in order to undo a plastic buckle securing the fire extinguisher. that was nothing that we were ever taught in training. but then to dampen the excitement and seemingly just to spite me, the fire, which had been going along pretty well, decided to put itself out.
with this and the flat on the LIE and the exploding power steering pump on 40th street west, it seems to place me within a special category of unlucky, but lucky that it could have been worse. i am grateful that this was all pretty fun for a bit of drama, but i sure wish sometimes that my new career would become a bit more gentle.... boring, even... maybe i should have expected this when the garbled message came across from dispatch earlier in the day that i could park in the 'devil's lot.' now, i think that it was supposed to be 'double's lot,' but somehow the distinction was missed in the hit or miss walkie talkie radio communication that the company favours. but isn't this just a sign that truth mixed with a bit of imagination is always more interesting than fiction? i don't think that i could make this stuff up and if i could, i wouldn't be getting paid for it (until it becomes a book...)