Precious Cargo

when author Craig Davidson took a job driving a school bus for kids with special needs he did it because he needed a job as a school year unfolded he found more than a paycheck he found kinship strength insight and a bus full of his fellow nerds he details his evolving journey with them all in his memoir precious cargo my year driving the kids on school bus 3:07 7 craig Davison joins us now welcome Thank You Nick it's a pleasure to speak to you well it's a pleasure to be here I enjoyed this book so I wanted to ask you about what life was like for you before you started driving the school bus it was full of ups and downs correct yeah and I think probably at the time it was more downs than ups I was I was a failure this is how I contextualize myself and I go into in the the early chapters of the book is I was a writer and I'd put out two books one of which did okay the other of which got tanked abysmally and it was all my fault so how was it your fault sorry well you know I guess when you write a book it's a solitary endeavor it's um it's you and the page and so when something doesn't work the finger of blame really only points to one person that's the person holding the pen so at least that's how I contextualise it and I but I did have editors and I did have an agent neither of whom I really listened to you know I felt like I think I was 28 29 when I was writing the book and it was a lot of hubris on my part thinking even if you guys don't understand what I'm doing I know what I'm doing I know that I'm gonna make this work and afterwards when it the book comes out and you realize you've made a colossal mistake and hadn't listened when you should have then that only intensifies kind of those feelings of shame and and worry about being here you're 30 years old you're looking down the barrel of a very long life as a failure and that's how I sort of saw myself and then you see yourself like I worked so hard to be good at this and I failed what what can I possibly do you know putting this much kind of ambition and and forward momentum towards a goal and if I'm still not good enough to reach it what am i good enough to do so that's where I found myself I think it's interesting that you considered yourself a failure you weren't even thirty and you had two books I mean not many people can even have a book their whole life yeah I you know and I suppose there's that now looking back or at retrospectively now as a 40 year old there's a lot of stuff that you feel as a younger person I guess that doesn't resonate and you realize that you were you you were kind of not in your right head but whether or not I can look back now at the time that's how I contextualize myself and it took itself out in all sorts of ways I became really isolated I didn't go out I took out a lot of my parents we're living there at the time and there's no people you can take for granted more than your parents you know what I mean and they deserve at the least of all and yet you kind of are the hardest on them sometimes when you're having a rough time so I just wasn't a fun person to be around and that's kind of the and I was scuffling for work too I was I was you know I had a house but I was kind of getting close to defaulting on my mortgage so there were a lot of pressures all of which I felt that I'd heaped on myself and even to 30 when you hear 30s like great yeah yeah and I you know I didn't have a guy didn't have a girlfriend I didn't have a relationship I didn't have children I felt like I could put all those things off until I was a success in my given field and then to find out that you'd kind of isolated yourself and work so hard towards a given goal and then have that blow up in your face and then look around at your friends who had had relationships and have kids and have all the things that you thought you would get later you just feel like you're so far behind your growth curve I've been there it's replicating it is so you start taking a series of jobs you lose some jobs like the library right and the day that you come home you had you know a debacle of an interview yet you come home and you find a flyer and so what happens next well yeah I pulled it out and took a look at it and it was a it was the bus company first student Canada basically soliciting applicants through putting leaflets in in everyone's mailbox strung down my street and to me it was like a life preserver it was like here is a perfect job for me because I thought okay I can still write I can get up in the morning drive you know 50 odd kids to school and one of these big old buses come home do my writing go out in the afternoon pick them up come back so it was a perfect kind of part-time arrangement that I thought was was ideal all I had to do is is get the job and I want to talk about the kids on the bus and a little bit but what were you like as a young child what was I like well I mean I was an overweight red haired class clown you know that was kind of my thing I realized you kind of do a self appraisal even as a kid like well what AM what am I what's one of my best suited to be here I certainly wasn't a jock I certainly wasn't a cool kid and I had a facility to make people laugh and I had no problem with making a fool of myself for other people's amusement so yeah that was kind of my niche that I found myself in for not just as a child but on into high school and even into university kind of as like the funny guy and then after a while I realized that maybe that wasn't my I was maybe a bit more introverted than all that so it seemed like writing was a more natural way of kind of expressing my creativity but not kind of in a like a class clownish way and I guess as a class clown people expect certain things from you yeah it what kind of felt exhausting sometimes you know but I'm sure like the the star athlete or any of those little boxes that you get put in in high school probably all feel exhausting you go back to your home at the end of the day and just like huh you can take off that kind of robe that you're wearing of who you are your niche that you fill in your high school and just be who you really are so yeah it got to be exhausting trying to make people laugh and I certainly had a lot of coming to grips with the idea of like being a comedian in real life would be a very different exactly so you get this job what kind of were you surprised to get the job and what kind of training I found that you know the leaflet was a good example like they clearly were looking for applicants you know even on the back of buses you'll see if you look at a school bus and you'll say call this number looking for drivers I mean they're always looking for drivers it's one of those kind of positions or jobs where there's a fairly big turnover for any number of reasons so the the job itself was fine she was at she the the supervisor or sorry the job the one who was offering me the job wanted to give me the job as badly as I wanted it so it was a case of mutual desperation so yeah I had got hired and did a very intensive training you know for even as badly as they want you as a driver they don't want to let you get on the road unless you are have the right disposition and you know prove that you can actually handle one of these buses which is an enormous you know a big bus is like an enormous vehicle to drive around obviously and I did a lot of training in like downtown Calgary and it is there were some white-knuckle rides there cuz the back of the bus will swing out like a good four to five feet so if you're not careful with the way your steering around corners you know you can do a lot of damage so there was a very intensive training and past my my licensing and then then it came to the route assignments and we want to talk about that in a second but what image did you have about choice bus drivers before you took the job well probably the same that most people have yeah is you know I I took the bus to school in high school and my bus driver was I'm sure very nice but she was kind of a faceless entity who you know you she got on the bus and you would only fall under her scrutiny if you were chucking orange peels at somebody's head or like causing a disturbance basically and that was the only time that she would really bother to interact with you so I guess I felt like there was a certain sense of first of all - I was thirty years old and I thought am i I'm Way too young to be doing this you know I always thought bus drivers like older and they have sciatica and they smoke you know big long skinny cigarettes you know before getting on the bus so I was definitely going through a point in my life where I thought this it was shocking to me that I was doing it but at the same point I realized I needed this job desperately and I was grateful to have it and at some point they actually kind of gave you an out as far as what route you would take but you took this particular route yeah um well like a great many things in my life damn it was a snap decision and some of those have gone very well and some of them have gone dismal II but in this case the my route assignment coordinator was just firing off different routes and there were a couple that would have involved big buses but they were further away from my home and the one nearest to me geographically was a small bus for five children with special needs and that was the one that I ended up choosing after you know after what was to be honest in the book I say a beat um you know she offers me the route and then a beat which you know and a screen writing is like just somebody takes a moment to reflect and think about their next words and I did it was it was a long beat and I finally said yes let's why did you say well I think for the same reason a lot of people would hesitate is that um I wasn't sure I'd be the right person to do that route to work with those kids because I had nothing in my own life that corresponded to to that experience you know I didn't have anybody in my immediate family who had anything that could be seen as a cognitive disability or a delay or a physical disability the closest thing is I write in the book is I have an in-law who fell down the stairs when she was very young and ended up having some trauma to her to her head into her brain but really there was nothing very close in intimate to me that I'd have much experience with that and I thought it would be so much easier in some ways just to drive a big bus and be the faceless bus driver but at the other point I thought this is a wonderful opportunity perhaps and if I'm not the right person listen I will just beg off the route I will at some point just say you know what it's probably best that I take a different route and I knew I always had that kind of as a fail-safe what kind of disabilities even using the word disability it's awkward it's tough to get the right word I run without writing the book too is how to best frame these sorts of discussions yeah what kind of disabilities did the children have well they were kind of all all different Jake was in a wheelchair he had cerebral palsy which is kind of an ability or a disability or a condition that is usually present from birth and it can get gradually kind of worse as that child no develops and Gavin had what on the route assignment was I said autism but his parents eventually told me no he actually has something called fragile X which is the same condition that Oliver had which which is a condition kind of a specific condition you know that affects growth and you know intellectual development and then Nadia and Vincent the other two students had what would just be called delays you know it wasn't very specific what their condition was and it was just that they were perhaps behind the curve intellectually from others in their same age cohort and you had a I want to I want to talk about some of the new relationships with all the children individually but you had a specific relationship with Jake yeah do you tell us about that yeah I can I feel like not divulging secrets or anything that's one of the things about the but memoir that I've been a fiction writer so it's very interesting going into this process and recognizing that you're dealing with kids and their families and and trying to be compassionate and all change the names to I did yeah all the names were changed but Jake basically four months before I started driving Jake and his mother were out for walk he was in his wheelchair and his mother was walking with him and they were out with a family friend and their daughter Jake sister and a drunk driver in a giant truck came and struck them specifically struck Jake and his mother and his mother passed away pretty much instantly and Jake was knocked out of his wheelchair as the car that the truck just charged on away and he was put into a medically induced coma for two weeks and he had vast and very severe injuries so he came out of it and that was that was the first day that I picked him up would be his first school day following this immense personal tragedy and it was that was one of the major things NAMM that I grappled with is that it feels like to me some people like just fate and like suffering because it feels like some people some families seem to be like anointed for a degree of suffering that feels so completely out of whack and unfair with other people you know what I mean and I don't I don't think it's something I'll ever come to grips with but it was something that I struggled with and it was I was forced to kind of look at and and and see how Jake and his family dealt with it persevered through it's it's difficult though at some level to to to grapple with that level of endurance and perseverance and you know one of the things he always said was like I'm I'm so happy and I have no idea why you know but there were other days were like it was it was rough you could tell he was he came out to the bus and he was just sunk in a deep kind of pit of despair which is completely fair and obvious and his father would come on and they always had this thing where I'm where Calvin would his father would put his hand around the back of his son's head and push their foreheads together and just yeah just be positive and it was a it was I think now as a father myself what an immense personal strength that entire family needed Calvin having lost as his wife and and and Josh and Molly having lost their you know law lost their their mother but yet they everyday they were there and every day they were showing like resiliency that I found absolutely amazing and what about the other kids you include them too in a an interstitial I guess that you called the secret right yeah like kind of a book book within a book yeah well all of them what I what at what amazed me on the bus is that they were all storytellers you know they were they were absolutely they loved to tell stories and the stories were illuminating as to to who they were I think from an adult looking at these kids you recognized that like their stories were interesting in their own right but they were also revelatory of who they were in their hopes and their ambitions and their their dreams and so you know Nadia would would tell stories about you know princesses and you know kind of you know heroines and Vincent would tell stories about you know basically about like cybernetic creatures and he was like a super tech technologically kind of in fascinated boy and Oliver would tell lies basically as I say he he had this friend Joey who would who was like the uber butt kicker yeah you know he was like the toughest guy he'd everyone I mean no one ever seen Joey we knew at some point Joey didn't exist but Joey was a manifestation of who Oliver wanted to be or wanted to this protector this protector and the kids were picked on quite a bit you know or from time to time sorry you're gonna say no to saying that Joey had biceps called thunder and does well I I swear yeah my I didn't laugh so hard that that year the belly laughter was such that and these kids were just funny like they were just hilariously funny and they knew they were funny and they got each other rolling in the aisles and they got me rolling in the aisles to the point that sometimes I really didn't have to pull the bus over because I was feared for you know making sure we kept on the straight and narrow down the road well you brought about talking about bullying do you think that because the kids were on a different bus that made them targets why do they need to take a different bus well that was something I struggled with wondering myself because it is it's kind of like The Scarlet Letter the short bus as some people would call it it's called a bus set in actual you know bus driver terminology and I thought well you know for example why couldn't I mean Jake was in normal grade 12 classes with his peers but he had to ride this bus simply because it had the wheelchair ramp and and so why did it why couldn't why couldn't all the kids just be filtered out into separate routes and just ride a big bus for example and they could have but what I came to realize throughout the book is that the kids on my bus anyways we're okay being on that bus and being in the classes that they were in it's not that they didn't rail against it sometimes it's not that they weren't hyper aware of sometimes this difference of they got off the little bus and they went to their own class whereas everybody else got off the big buses and went to disperse through the rest of the school to the other classes but despite that at other times they were completely content happy and I think most importantly aware of the situation that existed you know and they were much better dealing with it than I was at dealing with it yeah how did you handle the bullying not well no not well especially at first I got in some physical confrontations with people over it and what I ultimately had to accept is that these kids didn't like that like they I think as I write in the book me doing those sorts of things was forcing them to listen to a frequency that they had learned how to tune out and it was the frequency of like pure ignorance of people being ignoramuses and being cruel you know and I think Jake said it at one point he said you know life's tough but it's tougher if you're stupid and he was he was saying that to refer to all the people who would be you know dismissively cruel or just ignorant about the lives that those kids were living so I had to learn just like I could never accept it and to this day I can't accept it and to this day my back gets up about certain things but I didn't actually react in such a way that would draw attention to it I wanted to read you a passage from the book that relates to this mm-hmm there would always be pointers on laugher when we see this in children it's understandable but the year of bus driving taught me that far too many of us reach out on hood still thinking there something inherently hilarious about disabilities how common is it to mock people with disabilities in this day and age well I think less and less thing thank heavens you know I think as a society we are coming we're just becoming more enlightened about all sorts of things but it's weird because for example like people wouldn't make a racial slur like I mean people do obviously but they they I think that is known as to be verboten and if you do do that if you do it in in the earshot of someone who you are slurring they will come over and uh parade you over it or it could get physical or as if you say something cruel in the proximity of someone with a disability maybe you think that nothing's going to come of it because that person is not going to be able to stick up for themselves or speak for themselves or not even be aware in some cases that they've been slighted so but I do think we are I do think obviously we are making great strides but I do think there's much because I was talking to somebody who is an advocate for you know disabled you know people and and their families and she said that you know when a disabled person is pictured seeing a commercial the company that's doing that makes a big deal about it and you know she said why should why should it that's just a normal family unit why should that that be drawn attention to as though they're doing something very like socially forward and noble it's a lovely thing but at the same point we should just see that as that's just a normal family doing a normal thing right right and even like the r-word you talk about it a bit yeah and you know like the Black Eyed Peas had a song it was like yeah exactly no let's get it started yes I came but yeah how did your experience with these kids teach you about that word well that it hasn't gone away and and that you know I was Oh playing basketball pickup ball with like guys my age 40 years old smart guys like family men and one of them just popped off without word and you know you just think you would never use the n-word you would ever use any other word but yet there's still kind of a gray gauzy area where you think you can use the r-word you know in certain social situations and you know and I I called mode on it like that's just not cool there's no need to use that word it has no applicant applicability here so it hurts if it's hurtful it's deeply hurtful so yeah it's it's a difficult thing to navigate and you wish it wouldn't be that way but but it's obviously it's still there's all sorts of stuff that's still in our society we haven't kind of evolved but I think we are getting better are you still in touch with the kids I'm in touch with with Jake especially the other kids what's funny I thought about it you know what if I had gone up and knocked on Oliver's door in the summer and been like hey you want to go for a game of catch and his mom in the back going like are you there's a bus driver that's weird actually you know so it was like the bus that drew us all together and made it actually fundamentally acceptable that a 32 year old would be hanging out with you know 14 15 16 year-olds and so I look at it more like you've probably experienced as like this like me it's tree planting or summer camp or certain summer jobs it's like it's an intense experience where you are drawn together with a disparate group of people and you form really close bonds and have like really intense experiences and then but there's always a deadline on it it's the end of summer it's the end of camp it's the end of the work term and then you guys just fling off on your separate orbits but it doesn't mean that the intensity of the experience is lessened in any way or that the memories are any less vivid but Jake yeah the last time I was in Calgary we went out for dinner and shot shot shot the breeze with each other and it's wonderful it's one of those things that as I say when you're a good friend you can be apart for a while and it doesn't matter you sit down and all those years kind of evaporates then you talked yesterday back where you were at the beginning of your the memoir you were talking about this difficult time that you were going in and I'm guessing your definition of success was very different after you this year with the kids how do you define success now yeah the terms have definitely been altered you know I think that's such it's a difficult question because it's it's so complex but I but I think ultimately it's it's acceptance you know it's acceptance that year taught me acceptance of my own limitations of what what I can expect of myself really and also that like you don't have to realize your dreams in kind of this a hundred percent perfect kind of expression of what you thought they were going to be when you were in your 20s like you can't hold yourself accountable for those dreams you know and if you do you're gonna you're gonna lose out on so many other wonderful opportunities in your life because you don't think you're ready to you know sort of embrace them so I wouldn't have been a husband I wouldn't have been a father which give me to be honest much more joy than writing does as much as I love writing and I see myself as a writer and I guess I contextualize myself career-wise as a writer it doesn't give me joy joy comes from the places that it always was you know the friendships and love of the people that you care for and they care for you and writing or whatever your career path is a very minor part of that it's important and I would never discount it but um yeah I think I mean basically to be honest damn it just made it turn me into an adult you know I had a very late-breaking charge towards adulthood and driving this bus was was the driving kind of influence of it and there's a great line in the book about the title of the book I call the precious cargo right well that is actually the in the bus drivers vernacular that's the legal term for what we are driving we are as my instructor said we're not driving potatoes here people we are driving precious cargo Craig Davison thank you so much for being here Thank You Roger thank you help TVO create a better world through the power of learning visit TV org and make a tax-deductible donation today

Channel: The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Views: 840

Rating: 3.7692308 out of 5

Keywords: TVO, TVOntario, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, current affairs, analysis, debate, politics, policy, disabilities, accessibility, education, special needs

Id: 58FiUc9QhnY

Length: 26min 29sec (1589 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 11 2016