The other morning I was running some errands on my way home from work, and I was stopped at a red light behind a beat-up old work truck that bore a bumper sticker which read, "School Bus Mechanic." It was a small and simple sign, black block letters against a yellow background, affixed to the upper left hand corner of the tailgate. As I sat behind this truck waiting for the light to turn green and entertaining myself with my own wandering thoughts, I found myself strangely captivated by this sign. I couldn't really figure out what purpose it served. It wasn't just a sign designating the occupant's official capacity or the purpose of the truck. A quick glance at the side door showed plainly that this was the truck of a private contractor with a business of his* own. Besides, if this were the official "School Bus Mechanic" truck, then I imagine this information would be displayed more prominently than a small sticker on the back tailgate. Clearly, this truck belonged to someone who was a mechanic first, and worked on school buses on the side...almost as an afterthought.
My first thought was that the bumper stick was there as a sort of calling card, under the assumption that if "School Bus Mechanic" looks good on a resume' then it would look even better on the back of your truck. It's the sort of thing that could drum up business. If the schools trusted the mechanic with the care and maintenance of the vehicles which safely conveyed all the children in the area, then he must be a pretty damn honest and dependable mechanic. But then again, it seems like taking care of all those school buses would be a fairly full time job. Plus, we're talking government contract here, he's already got to be making some good money. Seems almost like the kind of nickel and dime business that the bumper sticker would bring in would hardly be worth his time. Those buses have to out on the road at 8am! He doesn't have time to poke around with your Chevy Tahoe. I guess it all depends. Is this guy A School Bus Mechanic or The School Bus Mechanic?
This line of speculation raised other issues as well. If he stuck the bumper sticker on there to proudly display his acquisition of the local school bus maintenance contract, then where did he get such a sticker? I'm sure you can't just walk in Bob's Bumper Stickers and get a "School Bus Mechanic" sticker, and if you could, that would defeat the whole purpose. Any jackass with an old truck could pose as a school bus mechanic, although I'm not entirely sure why they'd want to...but who am I to judge? No, the school must give them out. But if they were for the purpose I was proposing, wouldn't they have a little more pizzazz to them? Like maybe a greasy monkey in coveralls, winking and giving a giant thumbs up, and saying "Proud to be School Bus Mechanic", or something like that. Maybe that would be a little much, but the sign seemed too utilitarian for that.
Well, maybe there was a utilitarian reason for it. Maybe, as part of his contract, he had to display the sticker. Maybe it was there so that the teachers and the school administration wouldn't freak out when they saw a rickety old truck parked on the school grounds. The sticker was meant to be cause for a sigh of relief. Oh, that weird guy poking around the buses is the mechanic! Ah! He's not here to cut the brake lines or install hidden cameras. He's the official School Bus Mechanic for this district! Wave kids. That really made the most sense, although I have to hope there's more to their security than a bumper sticker.
Eventually, of course, the light turned green and the truck moved on, taking another one of life's little mysteries along with it. Maybe the sticker was just there due to that old bureaucratic tendency to stick labels on everything they see for no purpose whatsoever. Who knows? Not me. Of course, that leaves you with a mystery of your own: What was the point of this post? Uhhh, I'm not sure what to tell you on that.
