Something New About Something Old

A few years ago I learned that the top of UPS trucks are white. I was standing at a 4th-floor window of my office building looking down on the loading docks at the back. I saw the brown UPS truck below and thought, “Oh, well that makes sense.”

I imagine the trucks can get mighty hot, especially in the summer, with all that dark paint. Having the top of the trucks a bright white can reflect off the direct sunlight and help keep the interiors cooler than if the top was also dark brown. That’s smart.

Though I learned something new that day (which I’ve confirmed with other sightings), it didn’t really strike me as surprising. I mean, UPS trucks are not common to me — I see them occasionally on the streets, but I’ve never had any personal dealings with them — so learning something that makes perfect and immediate sense isn’t worth noting (unless you’re grasping for something to post about on your boring blog).

Last week I was in an afternoon meeting on the 6th floor of my office, and I could see a main city street out the window. I saw a yellow school bus go by below. The top of the bus showed the vehicle’s number. “Whoa,” I thought. A few minutes later I saw another bus with its number on top. In the couple of hours I was in the meeting, I saw four or five buses go by, all with their numbers painted large on their tops.

Now that was something that surprised me. I spent, what, 12 years riding buses? I see buses on the road every day of the week, right in front of me, beside me, and behind me. I pass schools and see a dozen buses in the parking lot. My oldest child has occasionally ridden on a school bus, at which I have taken him to board and been there to see him come off. But I’ve never seen the top of a school bus.

To double the surprise, the only reason I can think of for there to be the number on top is for situations like having a [police] helicopter following the bus.

[For those of you wondering: until this new job (started late last year), no, I've never worked in a tall (more than 2 stories) building inside a city.]

This discovery of something so large but hidden on such a ubiquitous object really amazed me. I thought, by virtue of having personally experienced them for so many years, I had intimate knowledge of school buses.

It makes me think of the time I was going to lunch with my visiting Swedish counterpart (from my previous job) and she saw a yellow school bus for the first time. She commented that she had seen them many times in American movies, but she’d never actually seen one in real life.

Funny how the mundane to one person can still surprise that person, and it can be exotic to someone else.

Bullgrit