January 20th, 2010

My last post about a childhood embarrassment got me thinking about how dreadful grade school and high school can be. Girls had it bad, but I think sometimes boys had it worse.

I rode a school bus to high school with about thirty other kids. At the start of every school year, senior boys took it upon themselves to haze the freshman boys by making them prove their physical capabilities.

The hazing went like this:

When our school bus was on approach to our bus stop, all of the freshman victims were told to get off the bus about four blocks ahead. Their challenge was to run as fast as they could to the bus stop and if they beat the bus there, they were rewarded by not getting the crap kicked out of them by the senior boys.

Nice, huh?

You might ask why the bus driver, a woman, would even let those poor souls off the bus ahead of time, since that wasn’t an assigned drop off point.

When everyone heard murmurings that the hazing was about to take place, we’d yell up to the front of the bus and beg the driver not to let them off.

But she did.

I wonder if today she regrets it. She should. She knew why the senior boys were demanding it.

But one thing she did do was drive the bus as slow as possible to the stop so the freshman had some chance of making it back before she did.

I don’t remember anything about the boys who didn’t make it in time. I’m certain I rushed off the bus and high-tailed it out of there. After all, if the seniors treated boys that way, what might they do to humiliate the girls?

My fleeing the scene was an act of self-preservation.

To this day, I imagine the horror-filled days of the freshman boys. How must they have survived the hours at school, knowing that at any time on the bus ride from hell they’d have to prove their worth to some jackasses who held such power over them?

I only hope that today, something like that would never happen. I hope if it did, the bus driver would be fired. The senior boys would get detention. And the freshman boys would be saved.