#middle school hell

So this happened on the bus one Monday morning. First thing to know is that there was a sports hierarchy at our school: Football (straight), basketball (gay), baseball (gayer) and soccer (totally exotic, alien like from another planet). Anyway, on the bus. I was sitting there and this troop of football gorillas-in-training was pushing down the aisle on their way to the last row of seats. As they passed by me one of them of course grabbed my baseball cap from my head. The game usually went like this. I would ask for it back. One of them would hold the cap over his head and try and make me jump for it. Did I tell you that being short really sucks? It was always futile of course. At the end of the ride I would have my cap thrown at me usually. Sometimes it was thrown out the window. Random really. No pattern to this.

Today was different. I was feeling kind of sick. My dad had taken my temperature, I didn't have one. I wasn't throwing up. So I was on the school bus. Anyway I walked back to the last row of seats and yelled "Give me my fucking cap back you fucks!" And then something extraordinary happened. The bus stopped. The driver stood up and bellowed down the bus, "For Chrissake give the kid his goddamn hat back." I don't know if the driver had a headache or a crisis or something. This had never happened before. I got my cap back. And we rode in complete silence the rest of the way.