Get Off The Damn Bus!

I'm a person who sometimes needs direction.

On my first day of elementary school I failed to get off the school bus when it reached my home. I guess I expected the bus to stop on cue and for the lady bus driver to tell me what to do. "Okay, kid. Here's your stop." This did not happen. I looked on in horror as the bus passed right by my house without even slowing down.

Too much of an introverted pile of quivering fear and anxiety to speak up, I sat by the window and cried as the bus made stop after stop on its route. I was frozen to my faux leather seat, unable to act and unable to speak. It was a pathetic display of ineptitude.

Soon there were no children left and I was all alone. I rode unseen back to the bus garage with the driver. Once she parked the bus she made her routine check of the vehicle. This is when she discovered the sobbing idiot about eight rows back.

She went back to her chair and picked up her CB radio. She reported her findings to dispatch. Sobbing kid. Idiot. Didn't get off the bus. Probably retarded. But it didn't take long to get things sorted out. My mother had seen the bus go by the house and had gotten in her car and followed us to the depot. She told the driver that the sobbing idiot child belonged to her and I was escorted off the bus and into her safe custody.

Look, it’s not my fault. My parents should have prepared me better for the first day of school. I need directions when it comes to being a functioning member of society. The pieces of the puzzle don't always fall into place the way they do for everybody else. Things you'd assume were common sense need to be written out. Maybe it's a mild case of Asperger’s syndrome. More likely it's just uncontrollable bashfulness with a side order of stupidity.

My older sister called the girls down the road she occasionally babysat and asked if they could see to it that her idiot brother got off the bus when he was supposed to. They said they would and the next day on the way home they told me when to get up and get off the bus. I think soon after that I finally got the hang of it. Eventually I became a pro. One more daunting challenge successfully overcome. But there were always plenty of others lying ahead.