Chapter 9: School Shuttle

We had to get up very early to start our road trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Salim and I were already up and doing the final packing when our friend who was joining us for the trip finally got up as a result of us constantly calling him. The first thing he said was “You’ll miss the school shuttle!” and we all started laughing. 

Missing the school shuttle was what motivated us to get up in the morning and get ready and out the door. There weren’t any school buses in Iran. You either walked to school or took the public transportation or your parents paid for a service called “School Shuttles”. Shuttles were usually full size cars and four students who lived in the same neighborhood shared the same shuttle. The shuttle drivers would tell each person when to be ready to be picked up. Being late for your pick up time could result in missing your shuttle. Iranian parents would usually take the kids to school themselves in that case, and that was why the “You’ll miss the school shuttle” was repeated several times from the time they woke you up and the time you were tying your shoelaces. When you made it to the shuttle though, the real torture began. The drivers usually had their radio on and at that time of the day, all the channels had a song being played about how nice waking up early in the morning is, or how nice the weather in the morning is, or something nice about mornings. Sitting there listening to those songs when you knew you could be in your bed and it sure felt much nicer was ironic. Then you remembered that you had a quiz on a chapter of your literature class and you hadn’t even opened it, so you would pull out the book from your bag pack and the rest of the ride to school was you paying attention to the names of the poets and the years they were born than to the songs on the radio.

Coming home from school was much more enjoyable. You started talking to your shuttle-mates about what had happened that day in school. I think our shuttle driver, for one, knew all the names of our teachers and their individual characteristics because that was what we talked about all the time. When we were out of topic, we would flirt with boys who were also out of school at the same time, wave at them and sometimes, our seniors would exchange numbers or winks. I clearly remember this one snowy day that we were going back home and we happened to reach a point where traffic was slow and there was a boys school right on the side of the road. The school hours were over and the boys were coming out and we couldn’t have asked for a better target for our snow balls made with the snow on the roof of the shuttle.

We gradually made a strong bond with our shuttle drivers. They knew each of us and even our parents. My dad was trying to get a taxi when he accidentally ran into a cab driver who used to be a shuttle driver that took me to school when I was in middle school years later when I was in collage. He recognized my dad and gave him a free ride. That was the last time I heard of any of the shuttle drivers that took us to school, but I wonder if I ever run into them accidentally, would they remember me and whether I was punctual or not? God knows I always tried to be punctual!