The School Bus - Every Man for Himself

The worst year of riding the bus for me was 7th grade. We had a new to our school district bus driver, who was about 25 and seemed stoned and/or medicated. Barney (he so didn't look like a Barney) regularly broke traffic laws, drove too fast and missed other kids' stops. But the worst was the day that he let us have a snowball fight ON THE BUS while he was driving. Kids were winging snowballs at his head. Somehow he managed to keep control of the bus, but a window got broken and some kids ratted him out. He got taken off our bus route and we got a new driver after that, but he held onto his job and was given another route. On the last day of school, the kids on his new bus threw all their books and papers out the window (kids must have brought reams of paper on the bus, because the road was a complete mess after it happened). Not surprisingly, no one saw Barney again.

 

I wish I could say I've blocked out a lot of my experiences on the bus in middle school, but I haven't. The best way to describe it is pure, unadulterated hell.

It started at the bus stop. There was an older kid there, much bigger than me (everyone was, but this guy especially) who liked to pick on me. Since he didn't seem it sporting to beat me up himself, though, he had one of his younger bully buddies do it. They'd find some flimsy excuse to pick on me (I was short and scrawny and didn't discover the importance of regular bathing until seventh grade), then keep at it until I either lost my cool and went after them like they wanted or the bus came.
I took a poke at one of them once, but made the mistake of doing it on the bus at school. We both got a week's detention, but it didn't really help much in the big picture.
A few times I couldn't take it anymore and started to go home before the bus got there. Amazingly, they said "we're just kidding" and maybe it stopped for that day. Maybe it didn't, and they'd start right back in again.
Most of the time the bus ride itself was a relief. Being a scrawny, smelly nerd, the social contract mandated I sit in the front of the bus. I was happy to. On good days we got a bus with a heater on the floor and I could heat up my feet. On average days I could hunker down and keep to myself, hoping nobody would notice me.

The ride home was almost as bad. In seventh grade the older bully graduated and I got a new, more aggressive one. This guy took a more hands-on approach and beat me up himself. One time I made it to my front porch before he passed me on my way home and he randomly spit on me for no reason. Pissed off, I went after him and kept coming after him. He eventually sat on my chest and whaled on me for what seemed like 10 solid minutes. Gave me a black eye that stuck around for about two weeks.

I think eighth grade was OK. I guess the bullies got tired of beating me up and moved on to someone else. All I really remember is trying not to be noticed. One of the best days of my life was graduating from eighth grade. We lived close enough to my high school that I could walk, and never had to ride the bus again.

 

Isn't there a part of you, right now, that wishes you could meet up with that bully and whip his ass?

I feel like that would be the ultimate satisfaction. Is it juvenile? Sure. But would it be awesome? Hell yeah.

 

Oh, no doubt. There's a very short list of people who, if the law allowed, I would not hesitate to crush their larynx and then piss in their mouth as they gurgled their last breath. Or, given one free non-fatal shot with baseball bat and no consequences, would gleefully go Albert Pujols on their kneecap.
That seventh-grade bully is one of them.

 

After these stories and reading the Oatmeal blog, I'm actually glad I never had to ride the bus to school. I was always forced to walk. Most of the time it wasn't too bad when I lived in small towns. The two years I lived in a city though I figured I was getting ripped off because it was a long walk to school. The worst part about not having to take a bus to school meant that there was no such thing as a snow day. I spent too many days as one of two kids, three teachers who were able to make it in and later the janitor at the school. For the whole day. no going home at lunch because no one else was at school. Just me and the other poor sap who was forced to be there.