Today was the last day (weekday)of the Fall shake-up. Monday begins the Spring shake-up. Shake-ups are when we all have to choose our work for the next few months. Everything becomes available for bid, and one by one, we sign up for what we want to work. Sometimes you take the same thing you had; usually you don't, or can't. Either the people in scheduling get to it and change it all around so you don't want it anymore, or a higher seniority driver decides it looks good, and it's not there when your turn comes to bid. Sometimes it's still available when it gets to you, but you see something you like better, so you take that instead. Three times a year we go through this process. On the whole, it's a good thing. It gives the company a chance to make schedlue and route changes, and gives the drivers the opportunity to change the hours they work, or the route they operate.
You get to know a lot of the regular passengers. Sometimes you don't even know their names, but you know their faces, where they get on and off. A few you may chat with, and say goodbye to on the last day with some regret. But very rarely, at least for me, do you keep in touch with any of them. One notable exception was a man named Doug, who rode my bus to work every morning about 18 years ago. We dated, eventually moved in together, and had a daughter, who is now 15. I guess you could call that 'keeping in touch' ;-} Our relationship didn't last forever, of course. None of mine do. We were together for seven years, until our daughter, April, was four, and after that...well...we stayed in touch. Actually, we remained friends, although not close ones, until he died a few years ago. April was 12 then. She had only known her father as a sober man because he quit drinking before she was born, but the heavy drinking of his past life caught up with him and he died of liver cancer. He was only 53.
I'll miss my regulars from the route 2. Many of them I'll see again on other routes. Some, mainly the crazy ones, I hope I WON'T see. (I'll talk more about the crazy ones in a future post.) This time, though, I'm keeping in touch with a couple of my regulars. One is Kim, who is on Facebook, and plays Scrabble with me. I like Kim, I like Facebook, and I love Scrabble. The other one is Bill. Bill for short, Dollar Bill for long. Of course, that's not his real name, but that's the way he's known. Bill has become a friend of mine. Every now and then you meet someone who manages to worm their way into your heart, not in a romantic way, necessarily, but indelibly nonetheless. Bill is that guy. I don't know why. He isn't... well...there are a lot of things Bill isn't. But he IS my friend, and I am his too.