SO, i'm watching the traffic slowly makes its way up and down Michigan Avenue when i notice a school bus (the old skool kind with the snub nose) and i'm transported right back to junior high and the best thing about junior high...HALF DAYS! you know, those days for parent-teacher conferences or teacher in-service or whatever the hell. i'm sure they just sat around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and gossiping about which kids are gay, sluts, druggies, alkies or all of the above.

in junior high, i lived outside a small town in Northern California called Red Bluff. Much like Blaine, nothing ever happens there, except that it was the capital of California and home to the state's first and only President, William B. Ide, after independence from Mexico but before California became the 31st state of the union. Red Bluff is also home to the largest two-day rodeo in the world (well, in the early 80's, can't say that i follow the rodeo circuit closely enough to vouch for that these days)...the Red Bluff Round-Up. Yee-haw.

living six miles outside of town, each and every school day involved THE BUS. the bus was a world unto itself, a world with rules and rituals and cliques and hierarchies, a microcosm if you will. up front were the kindergartners and middle school kids. behind them until the emergency exit, the junior high crowd. the back of the bus was reserved for the high schoolers and the throne of privilege was the ever-coveted BACK SEAT. from the back seat, you were the ruler of all you surveyed. it was the crowning glory of our inbred little lives.

our chaperone for these daily forays through the highways and byways of redneck hell? our bus driver: the infamous Marie. she was mean, she was gruff, she was firm, and she loved us with the love only a lonely, single, rural, quite possibly lesbian school bus driver has for her charges.

for a long time, we had this ratty old box of a bus that would constantly break down and wasn't big enough to carry all of us kids from the burgeoning exurbs into town. when the bus was full, we would scream in unison "OVERLOAD!" and the kids at the curb were outta luck. i'm not sure how they got to school, but they weren't getting on the bus that day. well, eventually, we got ourselves a brand new spanking bus with high-back seats AND A STEREO. this stereo became a bargaining chip for Marie, who often threatened to turn it off if we wouldn't settle down. these days i'm sure i would be begging her to switch it off, but back then we couldn't get enough wham!, duran duran, culture club, michael jackson, et al.

on half days, the junior and middle schools got out at the same time and we got a different bus with a different driver, one of those old skool snub nose kind. with the high schoolers out of the way, there was always a mad rush for...you guessed it, the BACK SEAT. on THIS afternoon, we were kings of the world. but this wasn't just any back seat, these were the SQUISHY SEATS. the squishy seats were like giant whoopie cushions and for every pothole on those winding rural roads, was an overexaggerated leap into the air, in order to land squarely on the squishy seats with a great big obnoxious FART. then of course we'd giggle like the schoolgirls we were.

but that's not all. the substitute bus lacked the all-important radio and we COULDN'T go over an hour without music. SOOO, i'd sing. now, a number of us were in choir so it wasn't uncommon for us to sing on the bus. but on half days, only the top pop hits would suffice. my most vivid memory is hopping joyfully on the squishy seats, belting out the lyrics to P.Y.T (Pretty Young Thing). aaah, some things never change.