Riding the bus.

Sometimes when I am lonely I think of calling her and talking to her.  Shortly before I stopped talking to her I received my karma in life regarding her. When I told my parents to stop talking to me, to never contact me again, I told off my father's mother too.  The conversation with her ended with me calling her fucking stupid. I finally reached that point when I just wasn't going to act like it was okay anymore.  I never had a conversation with my other grandmother though. I spared her from having to be confronted about it all.  I just stopped calling her. She was one of the only people who kind of protected me as a child so I didn't want to go hard on her.

I called her one evening and she was feeling talkative. She got to talking about her job at the time which was driving a public school bus. She was talking about how crazy some of the kids were on the bus. How she couldn't control them. She worked most of her later life as a janitor at the local elementary school. She was probably one of the best janitors in the world. Especially as far as being kind to children is concerned. A loyal and caring woman to the bone. Driving the school bus though she got to see a whole different side of the picture.  She knew where they lived now, who was raising them. She was getting a taste of why they were the way they were.

As the conversation was winding down I told her that I knew exactly what she was talking about because I was that boy she was complaining about. That kid you are so mad at is me. We don't talk anymore. She has never really liked me, but was always kind because that was what she was supposed to do. To many times she has said that something was wrong with me while she acted like my abuse was not so bad; just like she did her daughters.

Over the years there were always different kids riding the bus home to our house.  Some kids I got along with, some I did not.  Even as a child I did not get along with other boys very well.  I was sensitive, and because of my step father I was stuck in a mind set of being picked on.  The problem I had was that I really was a victim.  This victim mentality only fueled their fire because they would always get a rise out of me, which just made it all the more fun to pick on me.  It bothered me and I could not hide it. I have always been one who is actually hurt by the words of another.  If someone picks on me verbally it hurts me physically. I can feel it.  I would much rather be punched or kicked than have something mean said to me, especially if it was in front of others. 

I was in the first grade when I got kicked off the bus for the first time.   I was that wild kid on the bus always causing problems. Most of the time I was getting picked on and was getting in trouble for lashing out.  I was already addicted to chaos too. The chaos of JoAnn was such that if there were not chaos I would create it myself. The other kids were only using words which wasn't getting them into trouble.  Being physically abused though had me playing by different rules.

This was a big deal for her because she could not afford to take me to school because of her baby sitting gig. It was a huge inconvenience. She couldn't let me walk, I was in the first grade. Beating me really didn't work as a method of reigning me in. Thinking back on it kind of impresses me that those beatings still didn't keep me from sticking up for myself on the bus.  It a certain way I was really something else.

She had to go to the school for a conference of course.  She was really good at blaming me so that she wouldn't look bad.  My treatment at home was not ever discussed with anyone ever. She didn't know what was wrong with me is what she would tell them.  She didn't know what to do.  She knew how to make herself look like a good mother. She tries everything she says. Something had to be done about my behavior on the bus though.

I was getting into it with high school kids in elementary.  I mean come on, there was one adult to over 25 kids; that bus driver didn’t stand a chance.  The driver thought by moving me to the front of the bus I would not be so wild, it did not calm me down.  I was a wild child, already abused, and my parents were as ignorant as could be.  Like I said, that bus driver didn't have a chance in hell of controlling me.  

I remember that first year getting kicked off the bus because they came up with a system to try to correct my behavior.  Every day when I would get off the bus to go to school the driver would give me a slip of paper to give to the principle.  Either white or blue.  White meant I was good, blue meant I was not.  It was agreed that if I got three blue slips in a semester I was off the bus again, and I did fear the ass whooping that I had been threatened with if I got kicked off again.  I was only in the first grade.  I was only six years old.  Whenever I got a white slip, I got to raise the flag at the school every morning.  What they didn't understand is that I found this to be extremely embarrassing.  I dreaded it. If I was good I would be humiliated, if I was bad I would get it at home guaranteed.  I couldn't bear being singled out in such a way.  So it didn't matter if I was good or not, I was punished for being me. 

I think it was the fourth grade when I finally did something really bad.  I was sharing a seat with one of the kids my mom would watch.  Because of how my step father bullied me, I too, could be a bit of a bully.  Pass the buck kind of thing.  Shit adds up at the bottom. We were teasing each other as boys often do, when suddenly he said something about me that made all the other kids turn and laugh at me.  I grabbed the side of that kids head and shoved his head into the bus window, causing the window to shatter. I can't stand to be ridiculed in front of a group. 

When it was all said and done I was told how much work I had to do to pay for the window then I was taken to the basement, made to take my pants off and then was hit over fifty times with a plastic wiffle ball bat.  He made me count them as he hit me.  Mocking me for crying.  He would often hit me harder for crying.  I was a pussy after all.  It was not one of those soft wiffle bats that actually looks like a bat, that kind gives a little, but the long thin kind that is much more solid. I can't remember which was worse, the belt or the plastic bat. 

At the time I was confused.  I only did to that kid what was done to me.  In reality though I was not even in middle school yet and I had already shoved a kids head through a sheet of glass.

Can you see how this situation is only going to get worse?  All that needs to happen is for my hate to grow, and hate them I did.  I have spent my whole life trying to forget, but the memories are in me still.  Even by the age of thirteen I had forgotten a great deal of my early years already.  It was simply too much to bear. It's going to be challenging to dig them up. 

I didn't realize it then. It never even occurred to me. I was too lost in my own hell. Older though, one of my brothers having read some of my writing opened up to me about those experiences.  I never realized he was afraid too even though it was always me. JoAnn's father must have been a real piece of work for her to have ended up with these two disgusting examples of male primates. That guy was a terror. He devastated all of our lives. What must he have gone through to be able to do that to others?

It becomes utter madness when one begins compiling it.