Mean School Bus Drivers

            On Wednesday after song practice, I worked on memorizing “Lili, Taches de Roussure” by Serge Gainsbourg when I started feeling very tired. I would have next done some writing in my journal but decided I wouldn’t have the concentration so I instead went to bed. I slept for about an hour and then I was fine.

I had to send in my income report to social services, so I went to the OCADU website. It still doesn’t automatically know who I am, unlike anything else online for which I have a password. It asks me to choose between a graduate’s cap and a briefcase so it can figure me out, but at least I eventually get in. I printed up two pay statements, filled out the monthly Ontario Works form that asks for my net pay and deductions, signed it, stuck it in the provided envelope and headed out.

When I stopped at the mailbox by the library there were some guys sitting on a bench nearby, with one of them standing and telling the others about how he could buy a nuclear joint, smoke it and be high for nine hours.

I rode to Freshco and bought grapes, avocadoes, orange juice, blueberries, sun dried tomatoes, lettuce, asparagus, broccoli, clemencies and canned peaches.

I most of the rest of the day writing about Tuesday’s lecture

I watched a couple of Leave It To Beaver episodes from the third season that were interesting for their subject matter. One was about Beaver being left in Wally’s care overnight when the babysitter fell through. Their mother had told Wally to make sure that Beaver took a bath, so he told him to do so. Beaver was running the water in the tub when Wally called him to dinner so he forgot about then water and of course it came down through the ceiling, which needed to be repaired.

I think that in the twenty years I’ve lived in this building there must have been at least five times that either my daughter or I have overflowed the tub, sending water down into the donut shop and making the super knock on my door or angry Coffee Time owners pound on it. Astrid had an excuse, because she was just a kid that liked taking baths and got distracted as kids do. I only fill the tub to do laundry sometimes but my distractions are less of an excuse.

The other episode was about a school bus service that Beaver’s school started using. Beaver got suspended from the bus for a week for hitting another kid on the head. Beaver was bonking the kid back after he’d knocked on his skull, but the driver had only seen Beaver because Beaver didn’t know how to be sneaky.

Our bus driver when I went to school was my best friend’s father and my father’s best friend, Jack Shaw. I don’t think the service was organized in such a way that there would have been suspensions for misbehaviour. It would have been more Jack whipping the tar out of anyone that caused major trouble. I don’t recall him stopping the bus over the odd punch though.

I really hated riding the bus though, because I was not socially adept and I got teased. One time I was drinking from my thermos cup when a hand came from the seat behind me and bumped it, causing it to spill. I ignored it the first or second time, but when it happened again I turned around and heaved the contents of the cup all over a kid that was a couple of years younger than me. He was the son of one of my nearby neighbours but it turned out that he hadn’t been messing with me at all. There was an older kid across the aisle doing a reach around to hit my cup. The kid’s father called to complain and I had to walk across the field to apologize. I’d say my mistake was an honest one and that the older guy was the one that should have been punished.

For the first year that Astrid lived with me she was in Grade 2 nearby at the Parkdale Public School. But part of the way into Grade 3 she had to go to another school that was further away and so she needed to take the school bus. There were suspensions with that system. I think that I recall that the suspension slips were a different colour when the ban was longer. Of course, a lot of the suspensions were just the result of her learning how to behave but they weren’t always entirely her fault. There was one driver that was a real asshole who even made comments about White kids in relation to her behaviour. Once when I was arguing with him he closed the bus doors on my head. Before she had that driver though there was a really nice driver with whom Astrid got along really well, but unfortunately she became ill and died.

            I was glad when Astrid was in Grade 6 and she was old enough to take the TTC to school.