Talk about a parent’s worst nightmare…

In Castle Rock, Colorado, a relief school bus driver got rattled and confused when the kids wouldn’t quiet down and the tablet showing his route broke down. His solution was to drop all the students off at an unscheduled stop miles from their homes. More than 40 students were abandoned at a busy intersection, and the bus drove away.

Parents were not pleased.

“I get a call from a complete stranger stating that she has my children, and that is just about every parent’s worst nightmare,” said one parent. The children told their parents that the bus driver drove around randomly after leaving their elementary school, missing the usual stops and frightening them. Many of the students said they thought they were being kidnapped…you know, like in “Dirty Harry” when the serial killer maniac hijacks the school bus.

The bus driver, who had been a relief driver for seven years, is no longer employed by the Douglas County school system.

My favorite part of this story, however, was the driver’s interview with reporters as he tried to explain his conduct. “I recognize that I could have done better, ” he said.

Ya think?

Rationalization #19B was most spectacularly employed by Hillary Clinton, who used “It wasn’t the best choice” to explain her mishandling of classified documents on the  private “secret server” she had installed at her home while Obama’s Secretary of State.  That choice probably lost her the Presidency. But Hillary already had a Rationalization, #43 named in her honor ( 43. The Hillary Inoculation, or “If he/she doesn’t care, why should anyone else?”) when it was one of the popular Democratic Party spin attempts during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

19B The Insidious Confession, or “It wasn’t the best choice,” now has a new and appropriate moniker: “The Bus Driver’s Mitigation.”

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Pointer: Tim LeVier