So I had to write a personal narrative for school. (I know, school has started already... ugh!) And I thought it was pretty funny. So, I'm posting it here...
The wheels rotated faster and faster as we gained speed rolling down the hill. I pressed my hands against the seat in front of me to hold steady. The upper-middle class houses zoomed by as gravity pulled us down the hill. We approached the stop sign where, each day, our bus driver would make a rolling stop. The windows in the bus were all closed because of the fall transition into winter. It was inevitable; bus drivers hated elementary school kids. Therefore they would do anything to put them into danger. Mommy’s “precious, little angels” were no real angels, just devilish demons.
Our bus driver sharply turned the corner after rolling by the clearly visible stop sign. The back of the bus seemed to give you a much better feel of the road. This would come in handy if you were a surveyor, but I was a semi-professional student. Sitting on my knees, chatting with my bus-mates, my inertia refused to cooperate with the sharp turn the bus driver had made. I was thrown forward, toward the aisle. As a carefree eleven year old, I just went with the flow. Being thrown forward probably meant I would be thrown back. I was.
My head and torso quickly flew back as the bus straightened itself out onto Eminem Road. Making no attempt to stop my body, my head hit the side of the bus. Hitting your head on the side of the bus isn’t that bad, unless you hit it right on the edge between the steel, bottom half and the window, upper half. My head clonked against this edge, but I was oblivious.
I shot straight back up as if nothing hurt. (I think I was acting tough in front of my bus-mates.) But I did give some notice to the injury – I brought up a hand to the back of my head. Something was wrong though. My hand was feeling something warm, and maybe wet like I had just showered my head. I brought the hand in front of my chest and looked. I had to take a double-take because I couldn’t believe what I saw. There was blood on my hand. Not just a little blood, but enough to span three fingers.
My pupils dilated as I took in the shock.
“I’m bleeding!” I said, loud enough for the three sitting close by to hear.
This time a little louder, “I’m bleeding!”
I stumbled up and began to make my way up the aisle, as a bus-mate got up, only reigniting the terror in my mind. “He’s bleeding!”
The bus went around two bends in the road as I tried to steady myself with one hand, keeping pressure on my wound with the other. When I finally reached the front, we had arrived at two younger students’ bus stop. I sat down in the front seat while the kids got off. The interrogation was about to begin.
“What happened?” the overweight, curly, brunette bus driver asked me.
“I hit my head on the window.” I hadn’t known that it was actually the window sill.
“How bad is it bleeding?”
I took my hand off of my head and showed her the blood. She quickly brought down the first-aid kit from the compartment above her. She handed me the only pieces of gauze in it and then continued the torture.
“What’s your name?”
“Justin White.” I had ridden the bus for over 50 days now and she didn’t know my name?
The entire bus sat at the bus stop and waited while she called in the injury.
“You hit it on the window?”
“Yeah,” I said, knowing that I didn’t stutter the first time I told her, unless I had developed one from this blow to the brain.
I closed my eyes and it felt like eternity was going by as she lazily talked with “board base”. Finally, after what seemed to be hours, we continued the route. Of course there was no urgency shown to get me home quickly. We let the two brothers off at the next street and continued to turn around and go back up Eminem Road, passing the street that led to my demise.
One more stop at ChanningTatum Drive. I knew I would be okay. We came to the bus stop to find my dad waiting out there. I was very relieved to see another adult that would show more compassion than this fat, ugly, almost jobless woman.
“He was on his knees. I always tell them to sit down,” she shouted out the bus door.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” my dad replied.
But I was sitting down! I was sitting on my knees! And it doesn’t help when an eleven ton automobile gets swung around a turn with a stop sign to prevent any problems with inertia!
I wasn’t able to get into the doctor’s office until more than 2 hours after the accident. But that didn’t matter; I was home and I was safe from any potentially intoxicated drivers. At the doctor’s office, the very nice, compassionate, and not-so-fat nurse shaved off some hair around the gash in my head. She then proceeded to jab a needle right into the flesh of the wound to numb any pain. Three stitches were sewn into my head and forever etched into my mind.
I was very bitter for riding the bus home for a good three weeks. I think I am a bit bitter even after five years. That is not the point. I didn’t have any more accidents on the school bus after that because I always sat the semi-right way, just not on my knees. But I also had different bus drivers. (Perhaps they were more experienced.)
*The names of the streets were changed by the wittness protection program.
