Hell Bus: 7th Graders Are Assholes

Hell Bus.  There was no other way to describe it.  A bunch of self absorbed asshole 7th graders.  When adults say, "When I was your age, we didn't dare do..."  Well you know what?  I did.  All the way back in 1988-1989.  We were juvenile.  We were rude.  We were borderline criminals.

I should start at the beginning, Sligh Jr. High.  It was a 7th grade center only.  If you've ever seen HBO's "Oz" or a prison documentary, Sligh was like that.  Fights, weapons, drugs, gangs.  I mean, I came in from a pleasant, caring, learning environment.  This was now prison rules.  I was not prepared.  

The place was so bad the principal was fired halfway through the school year.  That just didn't happen back then.  Wait. I'm sorry.  He "retired" halfway through the school year.  Still, that just didn't happen.

I've since found out that 12-13 year old kids are the worst human beings on the planet.  They are self absorbed and full of hormones.  They hate adults, other kids, and most everything.  They steal, curse, fight, gossip, and  So you can imagine at the end of a long day when the kids finally break out from prison... I mean school.  They go insane.  

Here are the highlights.  There was one girl Melissa who didn't want to be in school.  She was a headbanging, cigarette smoking, white trash chick who made straight F's.  I don't think she passed 7th grade, much less any of the others.  She would fight who she wanted.  Fuck who she wanted.  And liked to sexual harass Cass, the one good kid on the bus.  

Melissa had either developed early or been held back a few grades.  Either way, she had a pretty good set of boobs.  And she liked to shove those braless boobs right in Cass's face.  I mean, really grab him by the back of the head and stuff them in his face.

I constantly had my pencils stolen on the bus by a kid named Richard.  Back then, they liked to play this game where they tried to break a pencil with another pencil.  Some of them got so good at it, they could crack a pencil in one or two tries.  You can see how they ended up going through a bunch.

The one thing that we did, mind you, should never be allowed was throw wadded up paper balls out the window at other cars and people.  Especially people with their windows rolled down.  

I remember one time someone threw a paper ball out the window, and hit a jogger.  He flagged down the bus, got on, and talked with the driver.  He then asked if, "Anyone wanted to step outside?  If anyone wanted to "dance" they should step outside."  I had never heard that term before, but he actually challenged 7th graders to a fight.  No one took him up on his offer.

I have to admit something even my parents didn't know.  I must have gone through 10 times the amount of notebook paper that year than any other year in school.  And yes, 90% of it went out the bus window.  

I remember the time I really got in trouble.  I threw a paper ball out the window, and it hit perfectly right on the windshield of a passing car.  The driver flipped out, swerved, and almost hit the bus with his car.  He flagged the bus and pulled it over.  

So they were trying to figure out who did it.  Well, mostly girls sat in the front of the bus.  Most of the boys were in the back of the bus... wrestling.  

No I'm not kidding.  That day a whole bunch of them were in the back of the bus wrestling.  The paper ball also came out the left side of the bus, so that narrowed it down.  So there was just a few of us that it could be.  

Eventually everyone finked on me so they wouldn't get in trouble.  The bus driver called my house, and told my Dad what I had done.  Yeah, I got in a bit of trouble for that one.  

Some of the other great things we did back including singing filthy songs.  The "2 Live Crew" had come out with their debut album back in 1986.  They had a song called, and I'm not kidding about this, "We Want Some Pussy!"

What ended up happening is that the boys on the bus would yell/sing, "Hey, we want some pussy!"  Then the girls would yell/sing/callback, "Hey, we want some D.I.C.K.!"

There was one time where everyone thought it would be great to outright scream in each other's ears.  Sometimes you would sneak up on someone and yell.  Other times a person would have you do it intentionally to see just how much direct screaming they could take.  

And I really want to emphasize just how close and loud we were screaming in each other's ears.  I'm talking about two inches away, and at loud as we could possibly scream.  

One time everyone decided to play, "Bloods and Crips."  They were waiting to get off at the main stop (not my stop) so they could have a mass fight/wrestling match.  Yeah, I didn't get to see that one.  I hear it was pretty intense.  Luckily, they only did that the one time.  

I, myself, can only remember getting into one fight on the bus.  It was actually with a girl named Candance.  She was repeatedly kicking me.  So I punched her in the face a few times.  Of course, you shouldn't hit a girl so I caught a lot of crap on that one, even if she was kicking me.  Honestly, I never liked her.

As I write this it's 30 years after the fact.  I can only imagine what I would read if I had kept a journal of that time.  Actually, it would be like a Steven King novel.  Seriously, when I describe Sligh Jr. High these days the first question I ask is, "Have you seen HBO's "Oz?"  Yeah, it was that bad.  The bus ride, less so.  But not for our bus driver.  We really made that a Hell Bus.