They Fired Me After 40 Years Of Driving School Bus Just Because Some Parents Saw Me at a Motorcycle Rally

I’d bought this bike after Margaret’s cancer diagnosis. Riding was the only time my mind quieted enough to process what was happening, the only place I could let the tears come without feeling like I was burdening her with my grief. The wind washed it all away, if only for a little while.

I sat on the concrete floor beside the Harley, my back against the workbench, and let the memories flood in.

Tommy Wilkins was the first to come to mind. Skinny kid with a stutter, started riding my bus in 1986. Every morning, he’d linger a few extra seconds to look at my bike parked in the school lot.

“Y-you ever g-going to let me s-sit on it, Mr. Ray?” he’d ask.

I finally did, one Friday afternoon when his mother was late picking him up. His face lit up like Christmas morning as he straddled the seat, gripping the handlebars with reverent hands.

Tommy grew up, graduated, joined the Marines. Came back from his third tour in Afghanistan with haunted eyes and trembling hands. I ran into him at the grocery store one day, barely recognized the hollow-cheeked man as the boy who’d admired my bike.

“You still ride, Mr. Ray?” he’d asked, no stutter now, but something worse—a flatness, like he was speaking from underwater.

“Every Sunday,” I told him. “Weather permitting.”

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