Last
week I read Mariano’s blog post about how riding the bus was a terrible
experience saved only by an amazing bus driver. I realized that my first
experience had been nearly the opposite; it was an amazing time tarnished only
by the bus driver. Maybe I’m being too harsh on the man, after all we barely
noticed him most of the time and he was only human. I’ll let you judge him
yourself.
For some context, this was when I
was in 8th grade in England. I had never ridden the bus before since
I used to live close to my school. This new school was pretty far from my house
so I had to take the public bus. Going to a new school in a foreign country was
terrifying, but the other kids on the bus took me in. As we spent more time
together, we became best friends.
I would often dread school, but the bus ride there and
the bus ride home were highlights of my day. We would sit either in the very
back of the bus or on the top deck (yes they were double-decker buses) and eat
snacks, look at memes, yell at each other, and generally be idiots. The fact
that I was taking the bus home also gave me ample opportunity to mess around
outside or go to friends’ houses before going home. It was thrilling to run
amok without having to constantly update my parents on what I was doing.
The driver who blemished these excellent days was a
big South African man with a heavy accent and a paperboy hat. On mornings when
we were crowded up to the front of the bus, we would watch him chug a strange
liquid from a brown bottle, then shake intensely like he was having a seizure.
Once, he looked back to see our shocked faces. With a grin and a chuckle, he
said, “Bit of whiskey eh? Haha, nah. It’s cough syrup,” as if that made it
better. In case you didn’t know, cough syrup can have hallucinogenic properties
when you pound it straight from the bottle. That day was the most I ever feared
for my life on a bus.
I’ve talked to my friends back in England and they
haven’t seen him lately. Cough syrup man, if you’re out there, I hope you’re in
rehab.
Wow. Cough syrup man will be a great story to tell the grand kids. I really enjoyed reading this, it was one of those stories that's weird enough that it takes a second to remember things like this actually happen in the real world. I never realized the bus could be the birthplace of so many interesting stories.
ReplyDeleteThis guy sounds like an oddball character that would be in a comedy sketch or something. I wonder if he drank the cough syrup for its drug properties or because he actually had a cough. It does seem kinda scary, though. On the bright side, at least you never got in an accident when he was driving, right?
ReplyDeletethis is my second favorite of your England stories, and it has always made me simultaneously want to chug cough syrup and never drink cough syrup. although i wonder if it actually was whiskey but when he saw your reactions he played it off as the first thing that came to mind.
ReplyDeleteThat guy is like laugh-track tv show material.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad I inspired this post, definitely a fun one to read. Also glad I was privileged enough to have a fantastic bus driver. That guy sounds wack.
ReplyDeleteWhen you talked about this dude during practices, I didn't realize that he was like your regular bus driver. That's really concerning. I enjoyed the imagery that you employed when describing him drinking the syrup.
ReplyDeleteHenry, this is a really interesting post. It's interesting how we often remember the "special" characters while in school as opposed to the mundane ones. I wonder how we would react in 2018 America to "cough syrup man". Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen...
ReplyDeleteThis is unbelievable. Did any of you guys end up actually reporting this dude, because entrusting the lives of a bus full of children in a dude downing cough syrup doesn't seem like a good idea. This was a funny story though, the part where he joked about driving drunk cracked me up.
ReplyDelete