Seventh grade was over and done with. On to the eighth grade. I started going to Park Junior High School, which would cover both eighth and ninth grades. I mentioned Abo Elementary and its fallout shelter in an earlier post. Park was also built to serve as a fallout shelter, but only half of the school was underground.
For as long as I could remember, my mother taught typing to ninth graders at Park. However, in 1978, she was promoted to being an English teacher at the high school. This was both good and bad. It was good because it meant I wasn't going to need to deal with her at school for two more years. I'd actually gotten used to not having either of my parents in the same building as me seven hours a day. The bad was that I was going to have to find some other way to get to school because she wasn't going to be able to drive me. I used to ride my bicycle to Zia, but Park was a lot further away and I really didn't want to ride my bike that far and back every day.
I decided to take the bus, the regular school bus. I just had to walk to Central Elementary, take the bus from there and I would arrive at Park in plenty of time.
The first couple of weeks, there was no problem getting on the bus. There were issues with some of the other students who just seemed to enjoy hassling everyone every day. (This is something I don't get about bullying: Many bullies appear to take delight in tormenting the same victims over and over again in pretty much the same manner. Does this not get old? Even when finding new victims, they will continue to provide the old ones with anguish on a regular basis.)
In the days that followed, more and more students started riding the bus. So much so that the bus driver started stranding students at the elementary school when the bus was full. Those students were not completely out of luck. There was another bus that came along a half hour later to take students to Park. However, I was told that bus frequently ran late and the school would not excuse any tardies for students who happened to be riding that bus. I guess the school's reasoning was that it was the students who were causing the bus to be late and if they started getting punished for their shenanigans, everyone would adjust their behavior accordingly. This was why the early bus started getting full.
One day, I was one of the students who was stranded. I knew I could not wait for the late bus. With the exception of my orthodontist visits, I had a spotless record. I quickly ran home, got on my bike and rode it all the way to school. I got there on time.
I would ride my bike to school every day after that, except when the weather got too cold and my Dad would drive me. I was always able to ride the bus home from school on those days because Park Junior High was the start point in the afternoon, so I didn't have to worry about getting stranded. Even though it's supposedly not cool to ride in the front, that was where I sat in order to avoid the twerps in the back.
The odd thing was that one of those twerps actually turned out to be a pretty nice guy a few years later and I was friendly with him. He later became a preacher. Not all bullies are doomed to paths of self-destruction.
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