I'll Never Forget the Terror of Riding the School Bus

It was a lawless place populated with merciless creatures, and it broke my mind

Getting on the school bus felt like entering a cave populated with vicious monsters. To this day I believe that many of them weren’t human. Their cruelty knew no limits.

I tried to focus on the rivets in the ceiling. The shadows dulled the vibrant colors of our clothing making everything uniform and gray. I tried to put my mind elsewhere. I tried to imagine a fantasy world that welcomed rainbows.

On the school bus, hope and childhood innocence died on the vine.

The seats were green like moss. The aisle was wet with the residue of melted snow. Some kids wore boots. The “cool” kids wore tennis shoes. Few people connected the dots and recognized that the cool kids were poor and couldn’t afford boots.

The driver reminded me of Charon. He didn’t speak. He was an animated skeleton. He didn’t even turn his head to look at me when I climbed up the steps. I had to go fast because the moment I cleared the door he slammed it shut and accelerated.

It felt like being violently pushed. The bus would go faster and faster as I tried to find a seat. Then it would slam to a halt and I’d be flung into the wet, muddy aisle.

The creatures would laugh if this happened. The ones in the back climbed up the walls. They looked like orcs. Their faces consisted of two points of light and enormous fangs. Saliva dripped down the fangs.

They sat in the back singing.

Oh, how they sang! Their songs were terrible and riotous. They were like a military force fortifying their courage before charging off to their death.

We celebrate the moments in movies when the leader gives a rousing speech. We cheer with the men he’s inspired. We think it’s a good thing. We don’t recognize that we’re witnessing madness.

He’s convinced them to set aside reason and charge into agony.

In a moment, they’ll all be lying face down gurgling on their own blood. What need did they have for empathy? They mocked the concept.

Consequences don’t matter for cruel creatures about to die.

They had no future.

They resented mine.

I’ve never felt so vulnerable. I wanted the gaze of the monsters off me. They watched with every stumbling step, waiting to pounce. “Please let the orcs and the goblins and the other slimy creatures look away!”

I sought refuge.

The first seats were always taken. The littlest kids huddled there. If my terror was great, theirs was incomprehensible. I felt such empathy for them. They were like baby chicks surrounded by foxes. All they wanted to do was walk in the sun and peck at the earth.

The foxes stood back watching and salivating.

Breathing.

The chicks knew it.

The foxes knew it too.

Terror you could cut with a knife.

What was I? What else might a fox eat? A rabbit maybe? Fast enough to get away, but not equipped to fight. There was no place to run to on the bus. The monsters only had to sit back and wait for my approach. The bus roiled beneath me.

The bus was a cage.

Spots opened up and I raced to them as the aisle bounced beneath me. The monsters tossed spitwads and airplanes. The skeletal driver couldn’t be distracted, but sometimes he’d look up and you’d see the fire in his eye sockets reflected in the rearview mirror.

That pacified the brutes but they didn’t retreat. They were like a pot that went from full boil to simmer. They turned their attentions to an easier target.

The trick was to make yourself invisible. You did that by sitting down. You never asked for help. That only drew attention to your vulnerability. If you were clumsy, they tore you to pieces.

I found a seat. There were kids you couldn’t sit with because they’d push you into the aisle just for a laugh. I’d learned that the hard way, and had to sit through the day with wet and dirty pants.

But there were other kids, indifferent kids, a few allies but not many. Some warned you not to sit. Some made room. The bus was moving fast now, that skeletal foot was made of lead. I used my momentum and spun into the seat. My back slammed into green imitation leather.

The things at the back laughed, but I hadn’t triggered the attack instinct. I breathed easy and hoisted my backpack.

The pack was heavy. The textbooks were enormous. Any one of them was more than I could handle, and all the teachers saw fit to give us work almost every night.

You couldn’t risk leaving your books at school or you wouldn’t be able to do the homework. I had aspirations to one day leave my town, so I brought my books home. The creatures never carried backpacks. They didn’t care about their work. Their only purpose was to slither onto the bus and torture those of us who entertained the dream that we might still have a chance.

“You think you’re better than the rest of us, don’t cha!”

They always spat when they talked.

The rattling of the death carriage was easier to take now that I was sitting. I could concentrate on my dissociation. I could disappear into fantasy to escape the terror.

I’d learned the route, and I knew there were nuggets of inspiration all around. There were little packets of magic that I could use as catalysts to my imagination.

Up ahead, just before we turned right onto the highway, I could look through the bleary window at a small patch of swamp. In the center of the swamp, sat a little island. This patch of ground was so distinct from the surrounding land, that it felt like a magical portal to a different reality.

My body reacted with excitement as if that were the case. This swamp represented an escape! I could get off the bus and go there, and swim to the island, and when I turned around instead of a road I’d see a castle.

Every day as we went by, I turned to look. I gazed upon that swamp and I felt the excitement surge through my body. The magic was real. I felt it tingle through me.

Adults told me I must be realistic. They told me I should resist those feelings when they bubbled up inside. I nodded dutifully and told them I understood. Then I went right on gathering up those feelings anyway.

I’d already discovered that colors are more vibrant if you allow yourself to feel. Even if something isn’t real, you perceive more beauty that way.

The creatures in the back were all cruel and colorless. I expected they’d see a child’s drawing of a rainbow and not hesitate to stomp it out with their wet and muddy tennis shoes. I’d seen many examples of colorful artwork discarded on the street with the imprint of tread marks obscuring the image.

The beauty remained. But examples of defiled beauty made me feel melancholy.

Not a pleasant feeling.

I harbored it nonetheless.

Melancholy made me better understand the blues and the purples.

I clutched at that understanding as if my life depended on it.

I don’t know what the skeleton driver thought. He sat there indifferent. The only clue I ever got from him was the blazing fire in the depths of his hollow eyes.

But since I had nothing else, I imagined him as an ally. Imagine that, an immortal and invulnerable ally who could shoot fire from his skull.

That made me better understand red and orange and yellow.

When I finished school and went home, I’d escape the bus and find my center in the forest. That’s how I came to understand green.

Many of my classmates stopped perceiving the world in color. They saw nothing other than a perpetual and endless gray.

Even now, at my advanced age, I still have my rainbow.

Without your rainbow, you have no life at all.

Don’t let the monsters take your colors away.

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