Beach Town Bus Driver

This place would have to shut down if it weren't for all of the foreign students who come here to man every junk shop cash register, wait on every restaurant table, cook every french fry, scoop every ice cream cone and make every hotel bed in town. I don't know why American kids aren't interested in these summer jobs at the beach. There are a few, but the American employees are a small minority. I was taken aback the other day when a lifeguard from the Ocean City Beach Patrol got on my bus speaking with a Russian accent. Next we will have Russian police officers and firefighters down here. Not that there's anything wrong with that! It just surprises me to see the students moving into the public safety jobs. There are a lot of drivers and I haven't met all of them, but as far as I know, we don't have any foreign bus drivers. Although, there is one guy who is Jamaican. He's not a student and I think he has lived here for many years. I think he speaks English but I can't understand one word that man says. It's bad enough in person, but when the dispatcher says something to him on the radio his reply sounds like, "E ab ta boo tee ray." The dispatcher says, "OK." OK??? What in the world did that man say??? What do you mean, "OK"? I really don't think the dispatcher understood him either but what else was she going to say?

So far there have been many Eastern European students arriving daily; mostly Russians with a few Lithuanians, Romanians, Bulgarians and Poles peppered in. What I find most interesting is the surprising number of students from Nepal. In addition, I have met at least one person from Slovakia, Finland and Senegal. We could open our own branch of the United Nations here.

Last night a jolly group of kids got on the bus a-whoopin' and a-hollerin'. As soon as they all got seated they all burst out in unison singing a song. At first I couldn't figure out if it was some kind of a school song or a fight song for a sports team or what it might be. They finished the song and somebody called out the name of another song. "Horray!" they screamed and started in on the next tune. Then it dawned on me. "Ohhhh! Irish drinking songs." The Irish students have arrived and I thought they were going to blow the windows out of the bus. I think they were having a ceili back there. I kept announcing the stops but there was no chance that anyone on the bus could hear me. A young lad came up to me and asked, "Say, I was wonderin' if ya might tell us when we come to Third Street." "We passed it about six blocks back." He turned to his friends and said, "We missed our stop." "Horray!" they all yelled and bounded off of the bus into the night still a-whoopin' and a-hollerin'. What a crowd! Welcome to America.