A Good Surprise (sorry for the long post but it’s worth it) November 17, 2009

Lately the problem that I have been having regarding what to write about on the blog hasn’t been because of a lack of interesting things. Most of you have probably guessed right that my job is anything but dull in regards to the people who ride the catbus. These people are crazy! I have seen or heard about things that I never would have guessed. People playing music on the bus, doing flips on the handrails, and just all sorts of weirdness. Halloween was especially interesting as there were basically multiple parties every night of the week preceding the actual night of Halloween, which happened to be the day AFTER homecoming. TOTAL MADNESS.

Instead, I just have trouble narrowing down which things to actually tell you. For example, this didn’t happen to me but I heard it from the bus driver who did actually see it: A girl sneaked an entire pizza on one of the catbus’ by shoving down her shirt. As in she had a shirt-full of hot pizza next to her skin. WHY? is it really that important?

But last week something happened to me that I immediately knew I had to re-tell. I has driving the tiger route on Clemson’s campus at about 11:45 when I saw three people running across a parking lot to catch the bus. I stopped and waited as they ran to the bus and around to the door, breathlessly jumping up the last step. They were all laughing and joking about how they didn’t think I was going to stop, and I just assumed that they were coming back from a party. Which was reinforced when they started asking me where my bus was headed. I told them the route, thinking that they would eventually recognize a stop. But then they told me they didn’t really have anywhere in particular to go, and asked if I minded if they could just hang out for a little while.

Which I was totally OK with. People normally talk about the craziest things on the bus, and I have so much trouble not laughing when I hear some of the ridiculousness that comes out of Clemson student’s mouths. But these three people didn’t just move towards a seat and ignore me, and I knew that they were different. They stayed up at the front and kept asking me about my job,

how is it driving the bus? <Not bad at all>

Can I drive? <NO>

How long have you been doing this? <About 2 months>

It went on like this for probably 5 minutes, then they started asking about me. My life, my education, my home. All sorts of things. The guy in the groups was a musician and so when I told him I played mandolin he quickly asked for my number so we could play together sometime. Which I have heard before but never by someone who actually wanted to play with me. Me and Daniel talked for the rest of my route, occasionally the two Emily’s also joined in. They rode the entire route with me, about 45 minutes of driving time. We talked about all sorts of things, they were just enjoying the ride. I let them stay up at the front and they seemed to have a really good time.

After about 30 minutes they simply asked me: So do you go to any sort of church?

I had a sneaking suspicion that this is what they were after, but I was glad to be able to tell them that I was involved at a church, fairly deeply involved in the worship team and loving every minute of it. Daniel smiled and said, “Yea, that’s great. Here’s a compliment, I could tell that you were different when we got on the bus. You have a very calming and open way about you.” Man, I couldn’t believe it. What a great compliment. I drove them back towards where they had gotten, which was lucky because one of the Emilys’ got called about her car getting a ticket or towed or something, and so they had to get off.

But they left me with such a great feeling. Here, in the middle of the night on Clemson (one of the biggest party schools in the country, or so I have heard and the past few weeks driving third shift hasn’t discounted) there were three people witnessing. And not only were they witnessing, but they were doing it the absolute right way. Just showing Christ love in how they interact with others, sure they asked me about Church, but in a completely non-threatening way.

The rest of my night and week was uplifted so much by this simple act. I doubt I will ever forget these three brothers and sisters in Christ.