Punishment or Reward????

I noticed on some blogs that I read or even on message boards, people only write about the good things that happen to them in life in order to present that perfect image or that they have the perfect family where nobody gets in trouble, everyone behaves, everyone does exactly what they are supposed to do. (yeah I suck at grammer and that was a run on sentence) Well, I'm not about to go down that path. I'm a normal Mom, have problems like everyone else and my kid acts up at times. The majority of the time he's very well behaved but...

Last week he was fooling around on the bus with Russell's son. My son got suspended from the bus for 3 days. What that meant was that I had to drive him and pick him up for those days, using gas money that I didn't really have and since gas is so high it made it difficult.
On the first day I drove him and when I went to pick him up and noticed that when he comes out he has a big smile on his face when he sees me. Hmmm.......I'm thinking to myself....boy my son is really suffering from this punishment of getting dropped off and picked up every day. Instead of riding in a bus which contains students from three schools (middle, jr. high and high school)....loud noisy, wild kids...he gets to be dropped off right at the front door after a nice, relaxing quiet ride. (ok so I do make him listen to my alternative music, which he don't like and he's probably sick of listening to *Hey There, Delilah*) but still I think he has it easy. It does not sound like much of a punishment does it? Because it isn't. It's more of a reward. The kids get rewarded, the parents get punished. It does not make much sense to me. I think that the biggest part of the problem is that the bus is so overcrowded and I don't think they should have 7 different grades on one bus. Kids are jammed in there, 3 kids to a seat so kids are going to get on each other's nerves. I don't know what the answer is aside from me driving my son every day and I may have to end up doing that for my own peace of mind.
Blessings.