One of my carpoolers has a Bucky or should I say, had a Bucky. For those of you who do not know what a Bucky is, it is a horseshoe shaped device that you wear around your neck. It provides support for your head so that you can sleep.

Since my carpooler is always sleeping in the car, he keeps his Bucky with him at all times. But, from time to time, he forgets to take it with him when he gets out of the car at the end of the day. When this happens, he frantically looks for his Bucky in the morning.

Well, the other night, when he got out of the car, he sat his Bucky on the trunk of his car while he put his stuff in the back seat. Then, he forgot that Bucky was on the trunk and drove off. We saw him drive off down the road with Bucky still on his trunk, but there was nothing that we could do about it.

I knew that Bucky would not survive the drive home. With the force of the winds at highway speeds, it would only be a matter of time before he slid off the back and onto the road.

Sure enough, when I arrived at the carpool lot this morning, my carpooler jumped out of his car and asked me if Bucky was in my car. That is when I had to break the bad news to him that Bucky was gone.

“Bucky’s gone?” he said. “How?” I explained to him how he had put Bucky on the trunk of the car and driven off.

He seemed to be in a state of shock and asked me to explain it to him again. When I told him again, he said that it was hard to believe. He then went on to talk about all of the places they had been to together and all of the things that they had done.

I tried to comfort him at his loss. I told him that he could always get another Bucky. I even offered to buy him a new one but he told me that it just wouldn’t be the same.

He then told me that when we get back to the carpool lot, he plans to cruise the roads looking for Bucky. I told him that Bucky could have been run over by hundreds of cars and truck, and that he might not even recognize Bucky. But he said that he would scrap up his remains and take him back home. He felt that Bucky deserved better than to be left for scrap on some cold and wet road.

For those of us who knew Bucky, we will always remember him. My carpooler plans to put a cross on the side of the road.  RIP Bucky.