Riding home on a school bus is something that most people have done many times in their lives, often without much thought of it at all.

Things were different back in the 1970s, before all drivers had GPS and constant communication with the central office. Back then, the driver had to either know the route or ask the kids for help.

When the kids in this story had a substitute school bus driver for a week, however, they decided to make the most of it. They tricked the driver by giving her bad directions and even making her let them off the bus for a walk each day.

The kids don’t know for sure, but it seems like the driver finally figured out that they were tricking her on her last day of driving. As a bit of revenge, she made sure all the school kids got off the bus before driving over a bridge, even though it was raining cats and dogs.

The Substitute School Bus Driver

The scene: springtime in the early 1970’s, on a Monday afternoon at the local elementary school.

Why is the bus so late?

A gaggle of kids are enjoying the beautiful sunshine as we wait for our unexpectedly-late school bus to finally arrive, long after normal dismissal time.

No one’s in a hurry to get going though as we were all country kids and each had a long list of chores awaiting us when we got home.

Oh no, I hope everything is ok.

Finally our bus arrives, driven by a small, mousy woman that we’d never seen before.

A substitute “for the rest of the week”, who apologized for being late, as she had been called in “at the last minute when our normal driver had had a personal issue suddenly come up”.

You can’t trust kids to give directions.

“I don’t know the route, so you kids need to give me directions”, she said.

“Mwah-hah-ha”, we thought! Our route ran way out in the country and took our normal driver about 30 minutes to run.

They are just wasting time and having fun.

By giving the substitute driver the most roundabout directions, we easily doubled the length of the route, delaying by another half-hour when we’d actually get home and have to start doing chores.

When we came to the bridge over the creek, I had an epiphany.

Now this is too funny.

“The bridge is old and dangerous, so you have to stop the bus and let us out. We have walk across the bridge, and then you drive the empty bus across and pick us up safely on the other side.”

I easily lied to her, the words smoothly rolling out of my mouth as only a ten year-old can do. She stopped the bus before the bridge and silently opened the door to let us out.

It is hard to believe a bus filled with young children came up with this plan.

So we wasted another 10 minutes sauntering across the “dangerous” bridge in the sunlight, skipping rocks into the creek and stopping to check out the turtles in the mud below.

That was Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday were the same. Thursday was probably the most glorious spring day the world have ever seen: brilliant sunshine, a hint of wind, birds singing in the trees.

These kids are really milking it for all its worth.

Strolling across the bridge seemed to go on forever that day.

Friday, it rained buckets of cold driving rain. The driver as usual stopped the school bus when we reached the bridge, opened the door and this time yelled everybody out!

Well, it finally backfired on them. Not that the kids don’t deserve it.

We trudged across the bridge getting soaked to the skin, and stood shivering in misery on the far side.

As she crossed the bridge in the empty bus, through the windshield I could see that our small, mousy substitute bus driver was wearing a beaming smile of vindication.

It makes you wonder if the bus driver knew all along but was just trying to make the experience fun for the kids. Whatever the case, it seems to have worked out well for everyone. That’s a fun story that these kids will remember long after they are out of school.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who had to find a creative way to communicate with her child’s school even though they refused to speak English.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this funny story.

Modern kids would definitely do something like this.

I’m not sure what this commenter is trying to say.

As an adult, I just want to get home as soon as I can.

This is the best kind of prank. Harmless and funny.

It is hard to tell if this is a true story or not. On the one hand, it was back in the 1970s, so it is at least possible in theory. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine kids coming up with something like this on the spot.

True or not, it is a wonderful story about kids playing a trick on their bus driver only to have it backfire in the end. It was too funny, and if it was true, the kids would never forget it. I have to believe that the driver knew all along.