The wheels on the bus...

I'm currently on hour 3 of a 4.5 hour bus ride back from Washington D.C. after spending a weekend with one of my best friends for the Alexandria, Virginia St. Patrick's Day Parade and shenanigans that followed. While the trek isn't near as glamorous as the picture above, there is wi-fi which has helped pass the time on this dreary Sunday afternoon. As much as I wish I was lying in bed right now, I have enjoyed looking at Ikebana's photos on flickr for the past hour.

This one in particular reminds me of the excruciatingly long bus rides to and from school as a child. My sister, two brothers and I were the first ones on and last off, one of the many pleasures of being a country kid. To further pass the time, here is an abbreviated recollection of four of my most vivid bus stories. For better or for worse, all are pretty hilarious looking back, but perhaps you had to be there:

1) My younger brother, Sam, chose George Washington for his third grade biographical book report. My mom apparently over looked the instructions detailing that students were to bring only a couple props in a sack to school to wear for the report...because I will never forget looking out the front bus windows to see an always-tardy Sam, or shall I say George, running down the driveway - cotton ball wig, black construction paper hat and all.

2) You could say my dad ruled with an iron fist and one of things he was perhaps most strict about was his kids being on time for the bus because 'he always hated when those fats kids would lolly-gag down the lane, while everyone else on the bus waited.' Like I mentioned, we were the first stop so no one was waiting but this didn't matter to him. One of the many times I was late, I was stapling my homework assignment for that day and in the frantic rush I was in with father barking orders, I stapled my thumb. There was no time to pull it out before running out the door because the pain in my thumb was much less than the scolding I would have taken from Dad had I been one more second late.

3) There was an extremely large and equally mean high-school girl on the bus who was the biggest (pun intended) bully ever. She was ruthless to my older sister and I and constantly made fun of my mom by saying: "Yo mama so fat..." or "Yo mama so ugly..." which was really confusing because I knew she had never seen my 'mama' so I didn't know how she could say such mean and untrue things. Years later, it made slightly better sense after coming to find out these were part of an entire group of jokes, even though it didn't change the fact that she was one cruel individual. I'm not sure she ever finished high school but hopefully she isn't still riding that bus route picking on people that aren't even remotely close to her same size.

4) The final bus vignette again involves poor Sam who was not only late but was walking as the bus waited on the other end of the driveway -- big no-no. An avid hunter with multiple firearms in the house, my Dad had just about enough when he took the gun sitting next to his 'easy chair' and fired a blank up in the sky out the front door of our house, yelling "RUN Sammy-boy!" Sam was never late for the bus again.

That's all the redneck stories for today. Happy Sunday to all!

xx,

Shanelé