true real life front seat horror stories

i think that it is an unwritten bylaw of bus passengers that you automatically let the craziest and/or most annoying person sit in the front seat of the bus so that they can let all of their thoughts out and distract the driver. when i rode a school bus in grade school through high school, the back of the bus was reserved for the troublemakers, the spitwad throwers, the noogiers, the wet willyers, the kids with hair in their eyes and the metalheads. in passenger bus style the old ladies, the middle aged men and the little old hispanic, italian or asian ladies sit in the front. they can talk of anything. its allowed. whether they talk to or maybe i should specify, talk at, the driver or themselves, does not matter. for the most part, i try to politely answer questions back, but when they become incessant, i tune out and politely do not hear them above the roar of air coming from the drivers mini side window in january that i've opened for a bit of fresh air. or i just cannot hear them because i've suddenly gone deaf or i've begun holding a one-way conversation with myself. but either way when a front seat passenger continues to talk about this time they got on a greyhound in 1978 in nebraska and the driver was smoking a cigar, and while i don't respond to the normal intricacies of nodding or saying uh-huh at the right spots in their conversations and they continue onwards, i begin to get a bit nervous. if you cannot angle that rear facing mirror in just the right way to see that one particular person... it becomes a game of hide and seek. where is that voice coming from?
but most times, it is just a simple case of someone who wants attention or to tell the story to a fellow front seat passenger (willingly one or the type with no other seating option available...) about what she likes about everything single animal on this planet or the middle aged man who wants to be a school bus driver because he has always wondered about what it would be like (and thus, not so far unlike me...), it is usually a pretty innocent stream of conversation. then you also have the hypochondriacs and worriers and complainers... the sort that gasp at every merge into traffic that you make or the students who are complaining about how heavy the traffic is on the day after thanksgiving at 3 in the afternoon in manhattan when three lanes of traffic are closed down and a tractor trailer has just jack knifed down the road in the 12 inches of snow that is falling. and of course, there are always the spies. the spies are the ladies who complain that you broke down at the new paltz terminal on a warm, running bus with a coffee shop not five feet from the door and access to their precious new york times and ny post because the bus travelling the schedule following yours is running ten minutes late in the snowstorm and they aren't going to take it and accuse you of sabotaging their trip, while you, the driver are thinking about how it could be worse, snowbank alongside a deserted road, no heat, no coffee, no new york post to cover yourself up with in the cold. but for the spy, this is the worst that can possibly happen- being 30 minutes late to new york city and because she cannot afford to live there, she must go there via a bus with all the common commuters who are in the same situation with her.
and speaking of breakdowns, i've had experience with a few. the cold has ravaged the buses as well as their drivers. i delivered two fresh buses to two drivers in a row one day, their buses either victims of the cold or neglect or pure random fate made worse by the fact that it is happening in the winter time. it seems to afflict buses particularly delivering skiers to the mountains. it is as if, the buses have some innate sense of a cold desolate mountain top that they have struggled up and now figure that this is the elephant's graveyard. bury my bones and tires here and leave me rest forever. i delivered a bus up the mountain last week. the drivers steed had stopped frozen in gear like the mama buffalo pluming exhaust into the frozen air. it was going nowhere and the mechanics who showed up a half hour later agreed. she was a tow job. couldn't have her final wish to idle for a few more days before running out of fuel amidst the skiers carelessly banging their skis against her haunches like cavemen cautiously walking up to a fallen mammoth to touch it before walking away like awkward ducks in ski boots.
i've come riding into the situation numerous times the last few days and each time i feel almost like the lone ranger riding in on his silver (eagle) to save the day without expecting much in return but a thank you. sometimes i'm lucky to get that, but then again, the lone ranger worked for free too. and then the new bus that i've nursed from the garage goes away over the hill into the sunset and i'm waiting for the garage to show up. but when i drive the sick bus away at least i don't have any front seat passengers other than the radio or my own inner dialogue about how many rescues i can travel to today. and i have always the knowledge that among seats on a bus, the person sitting in that front seat in front of the windshield is the one statistically the most likely to die.