It’s 6:50am on a non descript morning. I’m not even going to bother to tell you what day it was. It could have been any week day. The shrill pulsing E flat note of a back up signal fills the air. The White Bus commeth. My brother and I trudge out for another day of school. He a low functioning autistic, and me a courtesy student (save for the 6 weeks I was in a wheel chair and genuinely needed my friends on the white bus the most) We were the first stop of S1’s run. Brian Peddle, the faithful driver for many years. I have no idea how many. Even when I read his obituary the other week it didn’t say. BP, our seemingly fearless leader, was accompanied a rotating cast of bus monitors who’s job it was to help the wheel chair students in particular get strapped in properly. We had a wild cast of characters. We had my brother and I and our friends, the quiet guy who was obsessd with being able to single handedly push the school off its foundation and move it with his bare hands. We had the guy who would never shut up. Every time we had quiet contests (Last one to speak wins) that I usually won, he would be out. We also had this guy in a wheel chair. Under the layers of his affliction he would always tell you what he was thinking even if you couldn’t fully understand him. Day after day we hung out together on these routine trips to and from school. We built a community amongst us that has yet to be replicated exactly. BP always had those boxed cookies that he would share with us every day. We would go through them fast so they were always as fresh as they could be. On the day before the Easter weekend we ended up with chocolate bunnies. You wouldn’t be able to get away with that on a regular bus. There was a brief period of time when I went on a regular bus after my surgery, but it became obvious that I was arriving late to school ever day, so I was allowed to return to my friends on the white bus and i stayed with them until I graduated High School. BP would tell stories of his life’s endeavors up to that point. He liked country music, and normal music as we found out later. We could never convince him to go for a proper hockey team. It was Bruins or bust. Every day there was something new to talk about. Were we all on our best days all the time? No. We all had that friendship to back us all up. Just like the beeper I’d hear every morning for 8 years of my life.