Thank you driver

Every day that I pick up my son from school, I cross the pedestrian crossing twice.  Once alone and then once with my child (and on many occasions – lots of other people’s children).  Every time I cross I am accompanied by Lloyd.  Lloyd is an old man with a white coat and the most wonderfully lived in face – replete with every memory and summer day marked into his skin.  He has the social graces of a cactus but every day he stops the traffic and helps us cross the road.

Lloyd travels to and from our school every morning and afternoon by bus.  In the morning he helps our little princes and princesses out of the car at drop off and ensures that they have taken their school bags out of the car rather than their mother’s handbags.  He also makes sure that the car door is properly closed and that the children actually walk in the right direction to the school gate – in essence he is our valet man in the morning.

In the afternoon Lloyd comes back to our school to stand at the pedestrian crossing.  He always has a charming little witticism that he kind of says at you as he stops the traffic.  He never actually looks right at you when he speaks and his remarks are always a little bit kooky and quite insane but his heart is in the right place and he positively blooms when you say something  funny back to him.  And he always, without fail, every single day claps his hands twice and says “thank you driver” after he has stopped a car.  There is absolutely no chance that the driver can hear him but still he says it every single time.  EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

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So this morning I approached Lloyd to ask him what gives. In his magnificently quirky way he told me that the powers that be, “the Jesus without a crown” has decided that he is too slow and he is being replaced.  I felt so sad, he felt even sadder.  He will still be our morning man but in the afternoon he will stand at the school gate and not the pedestrian crossing.  He will probably still clap to the drivers but he certainly won’t be heard there, not even by the pedestrians.

I will miss his strange little remarks and his double hand clap but, every time I cross the road I will say “thank you driver” because I really believe that at school, it is not just the teachers who teach and not just the children who learn.