The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round and Round and Round and OMG SHUT UP

There was a news story here recently about a bus driver who got arrested for duct taping a student’s mouth shut, which I thought was kind of funny until I read it and found out he was a scary crazy person and the child was developmentally disabled and he had been abusing her, so it stopped being funny and started being more disturbing and evil than anything. But it did start me thinking about taking the bus to school.

I hated the bus. Hated. HAAAATED. I lived in the country, so the bus ride to school was a long one, and we stopped constantly to pick up other kids who lived in the middle of nowhere. Our bus was the one that no driver wanted to be in charge of. It was full of naughty kids and evil kids and downright cruel kids. The bus ride to and from school every day was one of the worst memories I have of school, and I have a lot of them.

Apparently, things have changed since I was young, but when I was a kid (stop with the old jokes, I know, I’m ancient) every age from kindergarten to senior year rode the same bus to school. That’s a recipe for disaster right there, isn’t it? I mean, put a bullying, hormonal fifteen-year-old on a bus with a sweet, innocent seven-year-old and see what happens. It was like Lord of the Flies on that bus.

I even remember my very first day on the bus: I sat next to another kindergartener (hi, Rich, who I totally don’t talk to anymore and I’m pretty sure doesn’t remember me!) and he taught me cusses. Then he told me I should say them to the busdriver. Which I did, because I didn’t know they were dirty words. So I got in trouble the first day for telling the busdriver “Hi my name is Shit Asshole” if I remember correctly. (I was a really sheltered 4-year-old. Yes, 4. I started school a year early due to my superior intellect. FINE it was because my birthday was in October. And actually I was a really sheltered child altogether. I didn’t utter the f-word aloud until senior year. I thought I would be struck by lightning. In third grade, another child said to me “I bet you don’t even know what a VIRGIN is!” and I said, very haughtily, “Yes, I do. A virgin is the mother of JESUS.” I was a total and complete catch!)

Some things I remember from my years of taking the bus to school:

• An upperclassman with a broken leg forcing his minions to bring younger children to the back of the bus so he could hold them down and stamp them in the middle of the forehead with the rubber grip on the bottom of his crutch, which was filthy with the gross snowy grime from the bus floor
• A busdriver who lost his marbles and drove into a field (we lived in the country, there were a lot of fields on our drive) with a bus half-full of children and sat in the seat, rocking and singing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and refusing to answer anyone who spoke to him until finally one of the kids figured out how to use the walkie-talkie and radioed the bus garage and they sent another bus and driver to rescue them
• A busdriver who decided to record the bad language the students were using on his bus because he was a preacher and kept telling them they were going to hell and God hated them , so he brought in a hand-held recorder and kept clicking it on while driving and swerving all over the road trying to catch really naughty cusses
• A weird bully kid who had a psychotic break and one day stopped bullying kids and instead sat in his seat singing “takes a better man, to turn the other cheek, takes a better man to walk away” in a tuneless voice with dead, dead eyes
• A girl who decided it was her duty to shove kids out of their seats, so every day, she chose another child, and would shove them out of their seat onto the disgusting bus floor
• Whorey kids who totally did it in the back seat underneath their jackets (listen, the bus ride home was long, but not THAT long, that’s kind of impressive, right?)
• All the kids deciding it would be hilarious to throw paper airplanes at the busdriver while he was driving and almost causing an accident; this did not phase them, however, and the following week, it was spitballs, followed by those bouncy balls you could get out of vending machines, those paper throwing stars kids folded out of notebook paper, notebook paper balled up (that one didn’t take a lot of imagination but there are only so many things you can throw, really) and apples

Listen, seriously, can you even IMAGINE being a busdriver? I assume it’s a little better nowadays – the busses are segregated by age-group, and a lot more upperclassmen have cars than they used to – but I can’t even imagine how insane a person must have been to want to drive a bus full of children who would not sit down and would not be quiet and would not behave and were THROWING PROJECTILES AT THEM WHILE THEY WERE ATTEMPTING TO STAY ON THE ROAD. I’m not saying I was completely innocent, here. I was kind of a dick on the bus. I mean, I wasn’t hurling spitballs, or anything, but when the busdriver told me to sit down and shut up, I didn’t. I think I actually got sent to the principal’s office in middle school for misbehaving on the bus, but I haven’t the foggiest what exactly I was doing that merited that. It was almost 25 years ago, so my memory’s a little blurry. What, do YOU remember exactly what you were doing 25 years ago? I thought not. Pipe down, junior. I obviously didn’t get kicked out of school so it couldn’t have been too heinous.

I would be the worst busdriver ever. First, I can’t even deal with kids. CAN. NOT. DEAL. You know how some people have the patience of Job? I have the patience of not-Job. I have the patience of someone who is utterly the opposite of Job. Which is why, until I found out it was a scary upsetting story, the duct-tape thing sounded like something that was actually possibly a somewhat rational reaction. You’re driving a bus full of children, and it’s your job to get those kids to and from school safely. You have to deal with asshats on the road who don’t pay attention to your lights and stop signs, and you have to make sure the kids crossing the road don’t get killed, and you have to make sure the kids on the bus are seated and not killing each other, and you have to, oh, I don’t know, DRIVE. This job is harder than an air traffic controller’s job. THERE ARE TOO MANY THINGS GOING ON. Why don’t we hear about more people dying in flaming bus accidents? I have trouble paying attention when I’m driving my car and it’s just me and I want to change the damn radio station, can you even fathom how bad my ADD would kick in if you factored in 50 screaming children all hell-bent on destroying the vehicle, me, and each other? Oh, hell, no.

So listen, I totally get it now, guy who drove into the field and rocked and rocked and sang nursery rhymes. You just got overwhelmed! It is understandable! How could you not? Kids are mean. Mean and nasty. And they DO NOT LISTEN. The preacher guy? He used to say “Sit down and BE STILL” over and over and OVER to us and we’d totally ignore him. Or laugh. Because “be still” was a funny thing to say. I mean, was it 1887 and we were in an old-timey horse-and-buggy contraption? Who says “be still?” But then recently I found out he died and that was sad. I mean, he didn’t die because of the busdriving, or anything, but I didn’t mean him any harm, and that was a tough gig, the busdriving. He just wanted us to sit down and be still! And we were not being still. And we were cussing! And he thought we were going to hell for it. That – well, that was a little disturbing but it was a small town and we took who we could get.

We also had a guy who was a dead ringer for Otto from The Simpsons and I loved him. He most likely was stoned off his gourd the entire time he drove us around and at one point he just disappeared and we never saw him again, but he was so laid-back and just did not care. And honestly, when he drove, the bus was quieter and better-behaved. I don’t know what that was all about. We might have been soothed by a contact high, now that I think about it.

I’m still a little confused about the sex people, though, honestly. How does that even work? I mean, was it actual sex-sex? Those bus seats aren’t very long. And we were kids. Country kids. We weren’t very knowledgeable about positioning and whatnot. Not to be crass, but I guess I get handjobs or whatever, or even (but ew, really, on a BUS? In FRONT of people?) blowjobs but actual penetrative sex? I’d think it was a rumor except someone got pregnant from it. I’m not a parent but I think this is something parents need to worry about. Parents! Talk to your kids about this phenomenon that was happening 20-some years ago! It needs to be addressed! At least tell them if they’re going to do it, have a little self-respect and not to do it on the bus. Those seats are filthy. And they’re just going to get a nickname, like Backseat Boogie or Ella the Bus Whore which I totally did not make up at all and was the name of someone at my school. Fine, not her REAL name, she didn’t put it on the top of standardized TESTS or anything, but that’s what people called her. Because she had SEX on a BUS. And bee tee dubs? It wasn’t even at night. It was after school. The sun was still up. That is super-whorey. And also quite sad.

So listen! When we are celebrating people in our society who have the most thankless jobs, like sanitation workers and such, I think we need to give a shout-out to the busdrivers. Because DAMN but that must suck and you totally must make an appointment to get sterilized after the third full day of work. So, busdrivers! You have my thanks. And also, I promise, if I ever have children, I will drive them to school myself. Dickery is genetic and I wouldn’t want to subject that on any other busdrivers. I’ve harmed enough people already.

Fifty-five percent

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,  
The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,  

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,  

Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,  

Which I am forbidden to see.  I do not find  

The Hanged Man.  Fear death by water.

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land

One of the great ironies in my life is how much I love water, and, yet, how very afraid I am of it. I can’t swim, you see. I can float on my back, if I concentrate very, very hard. I can also do a very flailing doggy paddle that sort of gets me from one place to another. I can also do the survival float, which is something you learn in case you are ever dropped out a boat and are unable to swim yourself to safety. I put everything I had into that task because I can’t swim, and I knew, I just knew, that someday this would happen to me and the difference between me pulling an Ophelia and lasting long enough to be pulled from the water would be my ability to survival float until help came. 

(Slightly off-topic, but that movie Open Water? KILLED ME. Not so much for the sharks. I mean, yeah, the sharks were bad. But the water! All that water! And having to stay afloat in it for all of that time! I started hyperventilating about half an hour in and didn’t stop until it was over. And it wasn’t a happy ending, either. THANKS, MOVIE.) 

They say the average adult human female is 55% water. That’s more than half. So a person, you’d think, would float, on their own, wouldn’t they? I mean, that’s just science, right? 

In third grade, we started swimming classes. Our school was one of the lucky ones with a pool, and they started us early. Once a week, instead of gym class, you had swimming class. Now, this is not a problem, when you are in third grade. However, once puberty hits (and is kinder to some than others), imagine having to be in your swimming gear in front of your peers. You have no baggy clothes to hide behind. Your perfectly poufed 80’s Aqua-Net helmet of hair is ruined for the day. You stink of chlorine (and your eyes burn, because the levels of chlorine were off-the-charts in that goddamn thing.) And, if you’re me, you can’t see anything, because you have the vision, without your glasses, of a 90-year-old, pre-cataract surgery. 

It didn’t take the gym teacher long to realize I was not going to be a star student. She gave us all swimming aptitude tests, and, based on how well you did, you were sorted into groups – Beginners, Advanced Beginners, Intermediates, and Advanced. I could not make it across the pool, short-ways, with a kickboard. I was put in the Beginners group. The Beginners group was, at first, a decent-sized one. We stayed in the shallow end, and, basically, our tasks involved learning to swim without the kickboard. 

This wasn’t really an option for me, because I refused to take my hands off the edge of the pool. It was only four feet deep, but I knew about riptides. I just knew if I took one single step away from the edge, I would get sucked into the deep end, and that would be the end for me. I also refused to get my face wet, because every time I did, I ended up inhaling water and coughing like a patient in the lung cancer ward.  

Now, as an adult, I can look back on this in two ways: one, I was being a gigantic baby, and two, I think I was having a panic attack. The baby thing – yeah, I was. I totally was. I was scared, I refused to try anything new, even when the teacher promised me I’d be safe, and I just stood there and dug my feet in at the edge and wouldn’t move. The other kids just hated me. I held up lessons with my tantrums. So yeah, I was a little douche. But two – I was genuinely petrified. To the point of vomiting before swimming class, it scared me so badly. I would shake the minute I walked into the pool hallway. My stomach still clenches up now when I smell chlorine in an enclosed space. So I’m going to say it was about 60/40 – 60% genuine, balls-to-the-wall panic-induced stress disorder of some sort, and 40% general childhood douchery. 

(Also, it bears noting that I am stubborn. Insanely so. If I don’t want to do something, and I can find a way to NOT do the something, I will not do it. I just grit my teeth and refuse. I am a two-year-old having a hissy fit, even now, when I am not wanting to do something. So getting me to let go of the tiled edge of that pool of death was not happening.) 

The gym teacher – it was a small school, and she was our teacher from elementary school to senior year – never 100% gave up on me, although she did, after a while, realize I wasn’t ever going to win any swimming competitions. There was a day when we all had to jump in the deep end. Just jump in. We didn’t have to swim anywhere. I don’t know what this was supposed to teach us, or prove. But when it got to my turn, I just stood there, frozen, until she finally told me, gently, I could sit this one out. I gave her a bit of a hard time, back in the day, but all in all, she wasn’t a bad person. And, as mentioned, I was guilty of douchery. I can’t deny that. 

By freshman year of high school, the Beginners class was down to me, a transfer student who probably weighed 90 pounds soaking wet (no pun intended) and was also as blind as I was without his glasses, and one of the special-needs students who came to class with us. No one else even used the shallow end. They were my brethren, those two. We would grip the wall and hold on for dear life and watch the clock tick off the minutes until we could get out of the water and have another six days until we had to do it all over again. I don’t think we talked much. Once and a while, one of us would halfheartedly try something with the kickboard, then look sadly at one another, sigh, and go back to gripping the wall. 

One day, the gym teacher was absent, and we had a substitute. She was robust. She was young, energetic, and she took no guff. She told us, immediately upon entering the pool, that we’d be diving off the diving board that day. My two comrades-at-arms and I went to the shallow end to hang out while everyone did this and she screamed, “Where are YOU THREE GOING?” 

By “we’ll be diving off the diving board today,” she meant we would ALL be jumping off the diving board today. Not just the Advanced Beginners on up; all of us. Including myself and the other two guys who couldn’t swim. 

Kids started diving, having the time of their lives, because we weren’t ALLOWED to use the board. That board was for the SWIM TEAM. This was exciting! And forbidden! I kept moving to the back of the line. Maybe we’d run out of time before it got to my turn. Maybe something would happen. Someone could drown; it happened all the time on the nightly news. Maybe there would be a fire drill. Something could happen. The powers that be intervened, sometimes, right? That happened, right? 

Then, my turn. No one left but me. Somehow, the other two kids in the Beginners had already gone (or maybe passed out and been carted off; I wasn’t paying much attention to anything but my own over-loud heartbeat at that point.) The other students, standing around the edge of the pool, all leggy and lovely, started talking amongst themselves in hushed tones. They didn’t like me much, but they were well aware that I DID NOT SWIM. I mean, how could they not be? We’d been in the same swimming classes for almost a decade. 

“Well?” Sub said, bright eyed and avid. 

“I don’t swim,” I said. I was starting to shake. I couldn’t even get myself to climb the ladder. 

“Everyone swims. Get up there.” I didn’t move. “Class, look at this! She’s too scared to climb the ladder! Come on, baby, everyone can swim!” 

I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I stood at the base of the ladder, petrified, frozen, my eyes closed, wishing for the earth to open up, for something to happen. The regular gym teacher would not have allowed this. This was – this had to be illegal, right? For an adult to do this? In front of everyone? To not only force me to jump to my death, but to mock me? 

One of the popular kids piped up. “Um, she doesn’t? Swim, I mean? She can’t. She can’t even swim without a kickboard. She doesn’t even go in the deep end.” 

Sub rolled her eyes. “Fine.  Jump in from the edge, then.” 

I moved the few steps to the edge, but couldn’t make myself jump. I couldn’t. The water was too deep. I would sink. I would sink and drown. In this stinking, chlorinated, peer-pressure hell. 

She walked over, briskly. “You won’t jump in?” 

I shook my head no. The other children were, at this point, embarrassed for me. Which is possibly worse than being made fun of. 

“This is nonsense. You can swim. Everyone else jumped in. A big girl like you, acting like a baby.” 

Sub then, cocking her arms back, planted them in the center of my shoulderblades and shoved me into the deep end of the pool. 

I sank. Like a stone. When I finally bobbed to the surface, I could hear screaming, the other kids around the edge of the pool. I gasped for breath and went back under almost immediately. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to fix this. I was flailing and splashing and aware enough to be thinking, rationally, so this, this is what it’s like to drown. I didn’t think it would be so bright. I didn’t think it would be so loud.

The next time I surfaced, something smashed me where my neck meets my shoulder. Bright electric pain shot up into my head and down my arm. I grabbed at whatever it was. They say people who are drowning will pull you down; they will. I can attest to that. Because I pulled Sub, who was attempting to save me with the aluminum pole used for that purpose (and doing a bang-up job of almost knocking me unconscious with it) right into the pool with me. I bear-hugged her. I wrapped myself around her like an anaconda. If I was going down, goddammit, this bitch was going down with me. 

She somehow managed to haul me to the edge and get me out, where I sat, dripping, gasping, crying. She shook water off of herself, glaring at me, at her ruined clothing. 

“You should have told me you couldn’t swim,” she hissed. “Get up and get changed. You’re done here.” 

She didn’t come back. That was the last time she subbed for us. I don’t know if she was fired, or if she quit. I didn’t report her. The grapevine in a school is vicious; I’m sure the word got around what she’d done. Times were different then. Now she’d probably end up in jail on assault charges. Then, teachers were afforded a little more leeway. I just know she didn’t come back, and that our regular teacher never made me go in the deep end again. And that, surprisingly, to their credit, the other students didn’t mock me. I guess my near-death experience had saved me from that. 

I think back about this sometimes. I think, this couldn't have happened like this. I do tend to put a spin on events; maybe I made it up and it didn't happen at all? Maybe I fell in? Maybe she bumped me by accident? Memory is a funny thing, and I'll never be accused of being a completely reliable narrator. All I can say is, this is how I remember it went down. This is what I remember happened to me. If it didn't happen this way, blame my brain; lack of oxygen can play funny tricks, sometimes. If my body is 55% water, is my memory only 55% accurate?

I still don’t swim. I love the water, though. I love the ocean; I love lakes, rivers, mud puddles.  I’ll even get into the water, sometimes, but I won’t go over my head. Why court disaster? I walked away from it once. I can’t imagine I’ll be as lucky the second time.