DUDE, WHERE'S MY RIDE?

My teammate at school is having a bad day. 

I am halfway to work when my phone rings.  Instantly my brain goes to the bad place:  Who's hurt?  Who's locked out of the house?  Who got arrested?  Turns out it is my team leader on the phone.

ME:  Hello?
SHE:  Hey, have you left for work already?
ME:  Yup.  Why?  Do you need a ride? 
SHE:  Well ...
ME:  I'm at Wildwood Road.  I'm turning as we speak.

Before she can finish telling me the story, I have squealed my tires in an effort not to miss the street that is more to my left than it is in my line of vision.  Thank goodness the car behind me isn't driving up my ass, as is the customary morning routine along route 28 where we all drive up each others' asses in an effort to outrun the school buses that stop at every other house.

Turns out my teammate and trusty team leader's car won't start.  The extent of my car knowledge is pretty much this:

1.  If the brakes squeak, you might need new pads.  If they grind, you need new brakes.
2.  If the car sputters and stalls out, you either need gas or the choke throttle is shot.
3.  If the car won't start and the lights won't come on, your battery is dead.

Turns out to be option #3.  After deciding the battery can wait until after work, she hops into my car, and off we go.  This could be the happy end to the story. 

But wait.

We are going on a field trip today to the New England Aquarium and the IMAX Theater.  We're taking over 200 children plus chaperones with us, and we manage to squish onto five yellow buses.  Add to this the fact that it's in the high eighties for temperature with humidity levels of epic proportions (instant sweat, underarms are like pools, and foreheads are like sprinklers), and then throw in the added twist of a bus (my bus, of course) that doesn't show up on time, and we have a typical school field trip.

The field trip goes phenomenally well, and I only lose three of my ten charges for a minute when we leave the theater and someone in front of us screws up the exit procedure.  Lining up to leave, we realize that we are one bus short again, but this time, it's not my bus.  My trusty team leader, the one whose dead car battery started the day for her, decides to go from her bus to the other buses to see if the four vehicles that are there have gotten all of their cherubs onto them while the bus-less people wait patiently on the sidewalk.

The moment she steps from the bus to do the check-ins, the driver of her bus slams the door shut and pulls away from the curb, leaving my team leader speechless and rideless on the sidewalk.  The other teacher on the departing bus yells, "You left a teacher behind!"  Apparently, the driver neither cares nor understands English, because they are on the highway before my team leader can even finish her text message to ask where the heck her ride has gone.

Luckily she can hitch a ride with the late bus that finally shows up after ten minutes, and we all arrive back at the school in relatively short order, although my team leader's homeroom is left wondering where their chaperone has gone.

At the end of the day, I write myself a note not to forget my teammate and leader, as she will also need a ride home again.  Walking toward her room, I yell down the hallway, "See?  At least I didn't leave without you!"

She throws up her hands in defeat as she knows that, like the social studies teacher who shot herself with a live Epipen during training a decade ago, this too shall be a joke that never, ever gets old.