Dad shaves every morning, seven days a week, even on vacation, before slapping some jewel-colored, mentholated unguent onto his cheeks. When he sees an unshaven face on TV—usually a “wino” or a “bum” in some Quinn-Martin production—he says, “That guy stood too far from his razor this morning.”
Despite these best efforts at organizing it—Mom’s tidy house, Dad’s impeccable gig line—the universe is already in chaos by the time I walk down the aisle of the school bus, hoping in vain to find an empty seat, silently praying that someone will move his book bag and gesture for me to sit. Most days I’m still standing as the bus lurches to a start, and the force throws me into a seat next to a pigtailed girl who picks her nose and slowly rolls the booger between thumb and forefinger, like a little Chinese stress ball.
And fair play to her: there is much to be stressed about. A kind of reverse segregation system prevails on the bus, in which the overlords sit in the very back and the disenfranchised are forced to remain up front, near the terrifying driver, whose radio plays Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” on a loop.
From the back of the bus, cruel nicknames are bestowed on all who embark. Pale, frail Michael Amato is “Michael Amato, the Albino Tomato.” Gary Fritz easily and inevitably becomes “Hairy Pits.” Shame on his parents for not anticipating the taunt. A girl whose address is betrayed, on her mailbox, as 10101 France Avenue is greeted—every single day—with a binary taunt in a haunting, singsong chorus: “One-oh-one-oh-one-oh-one-oh-one-oh-one…”
I gaze out the window and think of The Electric Company: Who can turn a bus into abuse? Anyone can plainly see—it’s silent e.
When my brothers and I walk down the aisle, we hear, “The Rushins are coming, the Rushins are coming,” after a 1966 movie that none of us has ever seen called The Russians Are Coming. Jim and Tom offer me some measure of protection, though not from the language of the eighth-grade boys at the back. They talk about which girls are “stacked” and which ones don’t require “over-the-shoulder boulder holders,” a phrase I find enormously pleasing to the ear, if not yet to any other organs.
The seats are pine-green. They smell of vinyl and what Mom calls “passed gas.” It is not possible to pass gas on the bus without an Inquisition. The responsible party must be publicly identified and held accountable.
“Who farted?”
“Not me.”
“Whoever denied it supplied it.”
“He who smelt it dealt it.”
Whenever one of us passes gas in church Mom leans over and whispers, “Are you sitting in your own pew?” It is her favorite joke. But any flatulence on the bus will not be met with good humor, and I resolve to hold it in for the next dozen years.
I rest my forehead against the frozen surface of the bus window. The older kids pinch the locks to lower the windows halfway. The inrush of cold air makes their breath look like cigarette smoke. Following their lead, I learn to press the fleshy side of my fist to the frosted glass and pull it away. The resulting impression resembles a footprint, and with my fingertips I add five dots for the toes.
There is so much to learn on the bus that isn’t part of the Nativity curriculum. Our principal is Sister Roseanne. (In a few short years, after the premiere of Saturday Night Live, she will become forever—to her everlasting confusion—Sister Roseanne Roseannadanna.) Our janitor is said to be even more terrifying. He’s Mr. Sipe, though everyone calls him The Sniper. They say he enjoys running kids down at recess in his orange El Camino, which is like a beast out of Greek mythology: the front half is a respectable sedan with a landau roof while the back half is a pickup truck. It’s as if Chevrolet has manufactured a 350-horsepower mullet—business in the front, party in the back. Every student agrees it’s the coolest car we have ever seen. The very name “El Camino” sounds Californian and confers the same California glamour on our Midwestern suburb that the Schwinn Sting-Ray does.
The Royal Knight edition of the El Camino has two fire-tongued dragons on the hood, either fighting or French kissing, or possibly both. Already anxious about swallowing my own tongue, I find the El Camino dragons now make me fear that I could swallow someone else’s too, or they could swallow mine.
Still, these are my favorite cars by far, the ones with creatures painted on the hoods, not least of all the Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, with its black-and-gold “Thunder Chicken” either breathing fire on the hood or sticking out its tongue. I know if I stick out my tongue on the hood of a car on a cold day in Minnesota it will remain there until spring, long after the rest of me has been prized away by the Bloomington Fire Department.
Counting cars is the principal pastime on the bus, but not the only one. The middle of the bus, representing the middle grades of the school, is alive with songs and chants. My ears reflexively bend toward the rhymes like flowers to the sun.
“Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg! The Batmobile lost a wheel, and the Joker got away—hey…”
And: “The Addams Family started, when Uncle Fester farted. They all became retarded…”
Retarded. Ree-tard. There is a kid who wears a motorcycle helmet at school—in class as well as at recess—and because of this I heard him called a ree-tard. It’s another ugly word that gets whispered. The boy is in every other respect exactly like every other kid at Nativity, except for the helmet, which marks him out as alien. No activity in our lives requires a helmet, save for playing football or hockey, or being Evel Knievel, and these happen to be the three coolest things it is possible to be. My yellow canvas book bag is emblazoned with the Vikings’ purple helmet. On the bus, it’s an amulet warding off ridicule, a token of universal acceptance.
The bus rings out with: “Beans, beans, the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot…”
And: “Liar, liar, pants on fire, hanging from the telephone wire!”
And: “Glory, glory hallelujah! Teacher hit me with a ruler! So I hid behind the door, with a loaded .44, and there ain’t no teacher anymore!”
Silence is the safest way to get along, which is all I desire. In life, as in games of tag, I never want to be It. I only want to be Not It.
“Bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish. How many pieces do you wish?”
It is written in the stars, or at least in the Chicago Tribune, that I will want security from earliest youth. Just by listening, I discover the traps to be avoided, the questions better left unanswered, the dozen Hertz Donuts to be declined daily.
“What’s under there?”
“Under where?”
“You said ‘underwear.’”
Or: “Guess what?”
“What?”
“That’s what.”
There are rhyming rules to be learned: “Finders keepers, losers weepers.”
And: “No cuts, no butts, no coconuts.”
And rhyming insults: “I see London, I see France…”
And taunts: “Steve and Wanda sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G…”