The Wheels On The Bus

The wheels on the bus go round and round
Round and round…
The wheels on the bus go round and round
All Day Long

This children’s song is not some dark nursery rhyme about baking blackbirds in a pie, catching the ring-a-roses plague, or babies falling out of tree-top cradles causing unspecified injury…

It’s a simple song about a bus – no danger, no hidden meaning, but consistency and reliability. The wheels keep turning, the wipers keep swishing, the doors keep opening and shutting. All is regular and predictable.

I sometimes wish life was like that bus.

Many idioms involve buses

• ‘Missing the bus’ describes a lost chance or opportunity…
• We’re ‘thrown under the bus’ when a trusted friend blames, betrays or abandons us…
• ‘Waiting ages for a bus and then 3 come at once’ describes the unpredictability of what we hoped would be predictable.
• Football commentators talk about ‘parking the bus’ when a team is very defensive…
• If ‘the wheels have fallen off the bus’ then life has completely fallen apart…
• If someone ‘has a face like the back-end of a bus’ that’s really offensive!

These life-buses are more realistic but not so pleasant…

Bus stop, wet day, she’s there, I say
“Please, share my umbrella”
Bus stop, bus goes, she stays, love grows
Under my umbrella…

Unexpected romance starts at a bus stop. The boy misses the bus, but finds love… no defensive parked bus, catastrophic wheels coming off the bus or being betrayed and thrown under the bus.

I like this simpler bus story.

I can’t predict today’s bus-ride – whether the wheels will go round and round predictably, or fall off disastrously. What I do know is that my God is there as my fellow traveller when I feel alone, my conductor to oversee me and my fellow passengers, my mechanic to maintain and repair any breakdown, my driver to make sure I’m heading in the right direction…

My life-bus is important, but that isn’t the whole story…