every girl wants to get in a vehicle and flip 3-6 switches overhead in the process of turning it on
When I’m going to get frozen waffles and ramen from Walgreens.
More things should be operated with big thumb switches and knobs and dials and shit.
So, true story. Many, many years ago, I got fired from my first job, at a thrift store. I had just turned 21, and I just started rapid-fire applying to everything I could.
And one of those job applications was for a school bus company. I wound up getting it, it paid 12 bucks an hour, that was a lot at the time. And what’s more, i was pretty good at it.
Most of the buses were the usual American nose-out-front type, but we had 2 of the flat-nose, rear-engine types. I was always drawn to anything mechanical that was weird, unusual, or old. These were all three.
In addition to being an absolute dream to drive, they had an overhead panel! It had, if memory serves, marker lights, a strobe light (in illinois, school buses have strobes sometimes for use in fog), cabin lights, and a couple of fans.
And i used to just flip that shit. Just to do it. And then one day I’m driving the middle schoolers home and one of them spots me doing it, and he asks “Are you just doing that because it’s fun?” I’m 21 and this kid has me dead to fucking rights. But i’m also the cool bus driver. And so I just go “Yeah” in like, the cheesiest cool-adult voice i can manage. And this 11 year old tells me “I can’t blame you.”
