「故事·听力」My School Bus Driver Is Stalking Me
My School Bus Driver Is Stalking Me
This girl’s name is Julia, and she wants to tell you about her school bus driver. He was not what he seemed to be at first glance…Once, at the beginning of the new semester Julia’s school had a new bus driver. Everybody noticed right away that he was kind of weird – like, he never smiled and always looked at the schoolkids with this creepy expression on his face. Sometimes he would ask them questions, like how their day was and other things like that.
These seemed like innocent questions, but the way he looked at them creeped them out, and his messy hair and unshaven face made them think that there was more to his queries than just innocent curiosity. Soon, people started talking about him, spreading rumors that he was an alcoholic or that he had been in jail. Every day, the rumors got crazier – like, he had a fake name because he was hiding from the police.
Of course, these rumors were too crazy to be true, but Julia was still scared of him, just as many others at her school were. She started to notice how other kids answered his questions – some didn’t say anything and went straight to their seats, others answered something like “none of your business,” and finally, some straight up insulted him. After a while he stopped talking to them.
Once during the weekend, Julia was out shopping at the mall, and saw the bus driver. He looked even weirder than before – he was wearing a jacket that was too big for him, keeping his hands in his pockets, with that usual weird look in his eyes. She can’t explain why, but Julia decided to take a picture of him. She probably wanted to show it to her friends later, especially because one of them was really interested in all the rumors about him. She hastily grabbed her phone from her bag, made a quick photo and continued shopping.
She was done after fifteen minutes and was walking out of the mall, when she noticed him following her through the crowd. She became scared and started to walk faster. Maybe he had noticed her taking a photo or even worse, he wanted to do something bad…She almost started running when he shouted out, “Julia, wait!” He even remembered her name! Then he continued shouting, and she heard something like: “your keys!”
She looked in her bag and her keys weren’t there. They had probably fallen out when she took her phone out of her bag. She was still scared, but she stopped because there were a lot of people around and it was safe. He came up to her and handed over the keys. He asked why she ran, and she didn’t know what to say. Then he smiled awkwardly and said “oh, I guess you think I’m creepy. I’m sorry about that”.
Afterwards, he went away. Julia felt so guilty, because she understood that he was just a bit weird, and not actually a bad person. She thought about it a bit more, and realized he had learned everybody’s names since he had started working as a driver. He just tried to be good at his job despite being shy. She immediately deleted the photo from her phone.
She was still a bit suspicious, but she tried to be nicer to him, chatting with him a little every day, and he seemed very happy about it. He had a genuine smile on his face every time she entered the bus. He didn’t do anything weird and never asked her creepy questions, just the usual stuff. She tried to explain it to everyone else, but they didn’t want to listen, they continued to harass him instead. But the worst had yet to come. It seems that her parents had found out about the rumors and went to her school to complain. She couldn’t imagine what the bus driver went through afterwards, trying to clean up his name.
She wanted to go to the principal to tell him that everyone was wrong, but she was scared. The following week, she got on the bus as usual, and to her unpleasant surprise, there was a different bus driver. She asked him what had happened to the usual guy, and he didn’t know. She thought about it for the few next days, and it seemed weird that he got into trouble because of rumors...
After a while, like a month later, she was at the mall again and went to a fast food place to eat...and saw him working there. She immediately went up to him and asked what had happened.
It turned out that they had let him go after numerous complaints caused by the rumors. He said that they had no choice but to fire him because the parents were relentless. Well, they DID have a choice, but decided it was easier to find a new guy. He found a new job only after a month, and because of the “scandal” it was the only option he had. He was sad and devastated, because he just wanted to be nice to the kids and do a good job.
It was painful to see how the life of a good person was ruined by some stupid rumors. Someone who looks perfectly normal can turn out to be the worst person ever, while people who look a bit weird can be great.