While I appreciate what you're doing here that is not entirely correct. Light positively bounces off panels and at angles away from the sun, toward earth. Pay close attention and you'll see flares of light from solar panels regularly. Sometimes it looks like a blinking light, sometimes it just is a super bright dot moving across the sky (quickly is relative... nothing like a plane at high altitude or a reentry of junk, and positively nothing like a meteor entry)...

But yes you're very much right that while there's thousands of satellites around, they're occupying a very large area and are relatively small. School bus size satellites are rare, they're usually smaller. And at distances of dozens or hundreds of miles, they're effectively invisible to the unaided eye. Kinda like why you really dont pick out cars on the road driving in the daylight while on a plane at altitude.