I've said it once and I'll say it again -- teachers don't get enough respect. They're literally in charge of molding the minds of the future of world, and they're generally paid peanuts. But you know who else may get even less respect than teachers?

School bus drivers.

Think about it! At least in school during classes, ideally, there's some kind of structure. Students sit down, hopefully don't talk, at least act like they're paying attention and taking notes -- if all goes mostly well, you don't really get much of a madhouse.

But on a school bus? DIFFERENT. BALL. GAME. The trip to and from school on a bus is essentially a seated recess. Except you can't even really say that, because there's ALWAYS the kids that will switch seats while the bus is in motion, no matter how many times they're told not to stand up or switch seats while driving.

On top of that, you have the students that decide to just go completely outside the box and crawl under seats while the bus is in motion. (Fun fact, I did that once. Got caught. Got written up. Know what my stellar defense to my parents was? I went with the ole "A Christmas Story" defense -- "Well, I was triple dog dared, and you know there's no getting out of that." Needless to say, my lawyers Ralphie, Flick, and Schwartz let me down.)

My point is, school bus rides -- especially AFTER a full day of education -- can be an absolute madhouse. Yet there's the bus driver, trying to remain calm and continue to keep every single over-hyper child as safe and sound as possible, WHILE delivering them back home as safe and sound as possible. Of course, it took me until this very moment to appreciate how incredible of a human someone has to be to be a school bus driver.

I only remember two of my bus drivers (which makes me hope that I only had two, because I'd really hate to forget someone -- you know me, I'm all about the positive vibes and not hurting feelings if I can help it) -- Carol and Mr. J. I remember Carol being an absolute sweetheart -- she was always SO nice to me. Mr. J was pretty strict, but rightfully so, I would be too if I were responsible for 30+ kids (probably more like 50) and their well-being. He was nice, though, if you were nice to him and showed him some respect. And from what I remember, school bus drivers weren't exactly the most respected by students. Hopefully that's gotten better.

Which brings us to the point of this article -- some bus drivers are just special. They have huge hearts and are SOLID human beings. And that's the case with Mr. Del, who is a bus driver for Auburn Village School in Auburn, New Hampshire. According to a woman who identifies herself on Facebook as Maureen Ann, Mr. Del bought a Christmas card for every single one of the kids on his bus route.

EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.

Let me tell you something -- as a kid who didn't have the BEST time in school all the time, something like that is HUGE. Feeling like you matter and someone cares -- that can mean the world. Especially in a year that's been absolutely bonkers upside down, where a lot of decisions have had to be made on the fly.

Good on ya, Mr. Del! We need more humans in the world like you.

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