Having computer issues (again)

With luck my computer will be working again by tomorrow, with luck. Right now it is shutting down without warning every ten minutes or so. Therefore I won't be able to write a page tonight. Must go before it shuts down again.

Amended. My laptop is dead. Mourn it. I will not be posting for a while

Ego

The idea that I might fall as I climbed along the gable roof of my Grandmother’s house never occurred to me. I was famous in my family for my daredevil stunts and this was just another one of them. I was considered quite the athlete and gymnast in our little town. I was proud of my reputation so every once in a while I would reinforce it by some public demonstration, like this one. I had yet to get hurt doing anything, well there had been a few bruises or cuts, but there had never been any broken bones or anything like that.

Everyone was below me as I climbed around like a monkey, screaming for me to get down before I killed myself, or gave them a heart attack. Finally I leaped into the branches of a tree by the side of the house, and shimmied down, ending my stunt just as I had started it.

“You’re supposed to go to your university’s summer practice tomorrow and you’re doing things that could kill you?” my father demanded as soon as my feet touched the ground. He was as proud as I was that I had been accepted on a football scholarship and I could see why he would get worried about me jeopardizing that because of a dumb stunt. On the other hand there was no way that I would get hurt and he should have known that, I was a genius athlete, not the sort of person that would fall off of a roof.

The university I had signed up to attend was in a large city, which made me a little nervous, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I had never actually been to a real city, not a large one. Now I was going to be living in one. My family never traveled much because we didn’t have a lot of cash. I was going to be the first of my family to ever go to college even. I was the family pride a joy, the pride of the whole town for my sports ability. There wasn’t a single person in town that hadn’t heard that I was going to be joining the big city football team, they even held a party for me.

When I got to the city however, in spite of all of my confidence when I had left home, I found that I was scared out of my mind just getting out of my parent’s car. Never in my life had I been next to a skyscraper before, or seen so many people moving around without recognizing any of them. I got checked into my room in the dorms, they were mostly empty of course, only the summer school students and the sports students were in them. And then my parents left me, and I was all alone.

I fell asleep that night, on my unfamiliar dorm mattress and I remember dreaming about stands cheering my name, just like they did back when I was in high school. Only in my dreams the stands were much larger then they were when I was back home, and filled with strangers who knew my name even though we had never met. I dreamed of fame.

Of course dreaming of fame and achieving it are two different things. I am a receiver and in my mind I was a pretty good one but my coach disagreed to my shock. He told me that not only was my catching accuracy not to his standards; I also didn’t run fast enough. He put me through hell, me, who had been heralded as the savior of my football team all through high school. It was said that it was thanks to me alone that we had managed to go to state, even if in the end we hadn’t won. My school had never once gone to state before I had enrolled in it. And every day I had the coach calling me trash and shouting at me that I would never be allowed to play while he was coach. I saw the other players they had as receivers, I had to admit that they were better then me, even though it was painful to do so.

To be continued...

The Bus Club VI

“Because she’s a temperamental lady, this bus, she won’t work for just anyone. I got her for cheap because she wouldn’t start anymore, not for anyone. Well I had a seat and talked to her for a bit, turned the key, and she worked like a charm.”

“Mother tried to dive her once,” Yanuva told us in a very low voice.

“You don’t have to whisper about it Yanuva, I don’t mind,” said Bill, though he had stopped smiling for the first time since we had met him.

“Well Mom didn’t like the way Dad kept the bus to himself, wouldn’t let anyone else dive it. She thought father was being silly and wouldn’t let up until he told her she could try.”

“A very stubborn woman, my ex-wife,” commented Bill ruefully. “I tried to tell her that something bad would happen but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Did something happen?” I asked.

“I should say so,” said Yanuva sighing. “The engine threw a piston, the diver’s seat collapsed under her, and the two front tires went flat and that just because she tried to turn the key in the ignition.”

“It didn’t take long for her to divorce me after that,” admitted Bill. “It took us a long time to pull her out of the wreckage of the seat, and when we did, well, she never acted the same towards me again. She always was head strong. A real lady though, disappointed her parents horribly when she married me.”

“How did you meet her?” I asked, because it seemed like the logical thing to ask, what with the way the conversation was going.

“I was working at a horse ranch that her parents bought. Her Mother and Father have tons of money; they buy just about anything they take a fancy to. Well, she loved horses and was about the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, so I got to talking with her. You know how it is; it wasn’t long before we were engaged. Her parents had a fit when they found out, tried to do anything to stop us from getting married but we were both young and stubborn as hell. So they told me that first I had to learn to act like a civilized person. I think they thought that would scare me off if nothing else would. So they shoved all of this etiquette and grammar stuff down my throat, made me stop wearing cowboy boots and jeans, and weren’t even satisfied at that. Then they got into business and I had to learn about dividends and trust funds. Took about a year but they finally admitted that I knew enough not to be an embarrassment so me and her got hitched.”

I guessed that the teaching he had received about proper English hadn’t entirely stuck because he switched easily between amazingly good English and the most hick sounding talk I had ever heard. Of course that was back in the early days of me ridding the bus, I would hear much worse but I didn’t know that yet. There was no limit to the interesting people who rode Widow Maker every night. But there is a limit to my time and space before I have to run to get to school and hand this in. Suffice to say, it’s been a fun school year, and I would appreciate if you wouldn’t tell my parents that I’ve been riding the bus this whole time because they’ll kill me. I told them that I was sleeping over at Yanuva’s house.

The Bus Club V

When the bus finally clanked to a stop in front of us Yanuva was the only person who entered the door with absolutely no hesitation. Even Onani paused for a split second on the threshold, and normally he was fearless through indifference.

The interior of the bus was as shabby as I had imagined. The original seats were still in the bus, tattered and graffiti covered as they were. A radio had been installed by the driver’s seat and it was playing the old country music. The driver himself, Yanuva’s father, was wearing a cowboy hat and boots, blue jeans and a flannel shirt. He smiled at us as we stepped aboard and stuck out his hand to each of us.

“Hi, I’m Bill, folks call me Tex. Yanuva has told me about all of you,” he said, motioning us to the seats right behind him. He was the least formal parent I had ever encountered. I realized as I sat down that I didn’t even know his name and calling him by his first name went totally against the way I was raised. I didn’t get the chance to ask him about this though, because right away he set into talking. I soon realized where Yanuva had gotten her talkative nature from.

“You know, this is the first time Yanuva has brought any friends with her like this, you guys must be special. I’ll let you ride anytime for free,” he added.

“The company you keep Dad, most of my friends would be scared to ride this bus,” Yanuva said teasingly. She was sitting right behind him, with her elbows resting on his neck while he drove. They made a sweet picture but her comment brought to my attention the other passengers on the bus. Most of them were men, dirty men in work clothing. The few women looked just as rough, these weren’t people that you saw in the neighborhood I lived in, but the sort of people who work hard, manual labor for a living. I tried to imagine one of the women, a lady in coveralls, her face streaked with soot, sitting in on my mother’s garden club meeting and almost burst into laughter.

My parents are always telling me not to judge people without getting to know them. It’s something I have been told my whole life. But it just goes to show that my parent’s don’t always practice what they preach I’m afraid. They were all to quick to judge people by status and job position, not once in my life had seen them associate with anyone who would have ridden on the bus I was on. I will say this; it was an eye opening experience. All of us, except maybe Yanuva, were from upper middle class families, that was just the sort of high school that we went to. And while I am sure that there are eccentric people everywhere. I suddenly realized that I was surrounded by them. Normal people don’t get on Tex Bill’s bus. Not twice anyway, and not sober.

I noticed that Bill, as I was forced to think of him as, knew every passenger he picked up, greeted them by name, and sometimes asked after their family by name as well. Of course the bus didn’t have official stops like the city bus did, but word of mouth had worked just as well. Anyone who was likely the ever want to ride the bus knew where he stopped. And everyone was always sure to give him money on their way off the bus. It was a system of trust, so no one ever broke it.

“Dad used to be a cowboy and ride in a rodeo,” Yanuva commented.

“And I was a good one,” said Bill, grinning back at us for a second before going back to watching the road. “I rode anything anyone could put a saddle on for my whole life. That’s why I can handle this bus, not one other person in the whole state could.”

“Why not?” I asked. It didn’t seem that different on the inside from some of the school buses that I had ridden in before, apart from how beat up it was.

To be continued...

The Bus Club IV

As for Yanuva, her father doesn’t have a very good reputation around town and she tends to have to deal with what it rubs off on her. Her father runs a borderline bus in town. The city buses stop running after eleven PM and he takes advantage of this by running an old, repainted, school bus around town. He doesn’t have a license as a bus driver or a taxi or anything but gets around this by never asking a fare, just a tip. This of course adds up to be about the same thing but it made a legal loophole for him to operate in, at least until the city council decides to do something about him. People call his bus Widow Maker because they say they never know if they will get home alive, between the shady people who ride, and the beat up condition of the bus.

Our forth club meeting Yanuva suddenly stood up and declared that she had had enough, that she was bored, and that we should stop meeting like this. We all stared at her in amazement. Like I said, she isn’t the sort to give up one of her ideas.

“After all that work?” I asked her skeptically. “Do you want Shizu to have to join the trading card game club?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “I meant that we need to find a more interesting place to meet, or some sort of purpose. Tell you what; you guys should sleep over with me next week instead of meeting in this boring old room.”

“You mean at your house?” asked Shizu.

“No, I never sleep in the house on Tuesday nights. Tuesday nights I sleep on the bus while father makes the rounds. I’m saying you guys should come along for the ride, it’ll be fun.”

“My parents would kill me,” said Shizu bluntly. This got me thinking about what my mother would say if she knew such a thing had even been suggested.

“I don’t think my mother would approve either,” I said, which was a bit of an understatement. As usual Onani didn’t say anything. He just watched us argue.

“That’s why you don’t have to tell them that you’re going to be sleeping on the bus. Just tell them that you are spending the night with me, that we’re having a club slumber party. It will be true too. And you don’t have to worry about anything happening, father will be there to make sure we stay safe.”

Yanuva always gets her way, eventually. This time was no exception. She is truly the driving force behind the club and both Shizu and I caved. Onani had long since made it clear he didn’t care what his parents thought, he did as he pleased. I don’t think that there was a single one of us who wasn’t affected by the sense of adventure that came with Yanuva’s suggestion.

I won’t say that it was easy for Shizu or me to manage to convince our parents to let us go on a sleep over on a school night. Despite being high school students, both of us had problems leaving the house over night without parental permission. Shizu in particular had a hard time of course, but some how she managed. If Onani had any difficulties getting away we would never hear about it. I doubt he did though, he seemed to do what ever he liked; I doubt he even told his parents he was leaving the house for the night. Yanuva of course had it the easiest; she did this every Tuesday night.

Still we all managed to meet at the appointed time at the informal bus stop where Yanuva’s father would pick us up. Yanuva had told us not to bother bringing anything. It wasn’t like we were going to be changing into pajamas or brushing our teeth on the bus she pointed out. And she said she would take care of the snacks.

To be continued...

The Bus Club III

I found that I had class all of my classes with at least one of the other would be club members. Other then Yanuva they weren’t the sort of people you would notice unless you were looking for them. Neither of them spoke during class unless called on and sat towards the back. I found after that first day however that they moved seats so that they were sitting next to me. Like it or not they had accepted me and I was now one of them. They never talked to me and I never talked to them but that didn’t matter. I realized that everyone in the school had already decided that I was one of them as well. There was nothing I could do about it now.

If I was going to be a member of their club I decided that I was going to take it seriously anyway. So I went to Yanuva and asked her if there was anything that I could do. It had already been a week since I had joined their club and there still seemed to be some problems in dealing with the adults.

“You have no idea how happy I am to hear you see that. I was worried we were forcing you to join on guilt. I’ll be sure to tell you if I do need any help, don’t worry. Right now I am just trying to get a meeting with the vice principle.” I hadn’t realized that Shizu had come up behind me, she moved very quietly. Now she came into view in the corner of my vision.

“I just had a meeting with the advisor. You better get the club together fast Yanuva, he’s threatening me with the trading card game club. And I’ve never even touched a trading card.”

“Now where’s the trust?” asked Yanuva smiling. “If you two are free after school we can get Onani and go talk to the teacher I think we have the best bet convincing to sponsor us.”

To avoid incriminating myself in this document I will skip the rest of the conversation. Students always talk about their teachers and what they say tends not to be very complementary. I am sure that everyone knows that. Actually I don’t think that the rest of that day really matters much. We got our sponsorship. It was an English teacher which is why I am writing this account anyway. That was the deal, she would sponsor us as a club and in exchange we would each write her an account of the clubs activities. I am a procrastinator so I am writing this at one in the morning. Any mistakes, or poor writing you can blame on highly caffeinated and sleep deprived state. However I have always been good at writing so I am hoping I am not inflicting too much pain on the reader.

The first couple of club meetings that occurred were boring. We didn’t really have a point other then to keep Shizu’s meetings with the advisor pleasant. We had to meet though because I quickly discovered that my companions were on the school watch list and I was quickly becoming guilty by association.

Onani had once tried to commit suicide. Leaving behind a note saying “suicide notes are so melodramatic”, he never told anyone why he had actually thought he should die. The teachers keep a very close eye on him just in case. He never mentions it and neither do the other members of the club, it’s taboo to mention anything about suicide around him, even though he doesn’t seem to mind the, other two do.

Shizu has extremely over protective parents who insist that the school watch her to make sure she doesn’t get bullied or feels left out and to make sure she is making friends. She told me that’s why she is so good at sneaking around; she has to sneak around to have any fun. Her parents still make her watch PG or G films only and she’s a high-schooler and that’s just an example.

To be continued...

The Bus Club II

“She kind of did tell me no, I remember that,” protested Yanuva. “She told me her parents wouldn’t allow her to go over to the house of anyone they hadn’t met. So I told her I would go meet her parents.”

“I wasn’t actually going to introduce her to my parents,” admitted Shizu, “except that I was forced to.”

“Hurrah for school advisors,” said Yanuva. Shizu’s parent’s make her go see the advisor every week because they are determined that she isn’t developing adequate social skills. In order to get the advisor off of her case a bit Shizu told him that she had become friends with Yanuva and was having her over after school.

“After that I didn’t have a choice, he reports to my parents,” said Shizu.

Onani has never told me how he got dragged into Yanuva’s wake and Yanuva alone telling a story is a little unfair so let us just say that he joined the club before I did. But it wasn’t a club still, they were eating together but they hadn’t even thought about making it a club until Shizu’s next meeting with the advisor.

“He told me ‘I still think you should interact more with your peers. I want you to join one of the extracurricular clubs the school has. It will be good for you.’”

“When she told me that I had to help her,” said Yanuva. “That’s what friends are for after all. Why should she have to find a club when we already were one practically?”

They ran into a problem though getting recognized as a club however by the school. And they had to be because the school advisor had given Shizu a time limit of three weeks to find a club or he would find one for her. The guidelines to become a school club however are kind of strict. First of all the club must have at least four members, they were only three at the time. That’s where I came into it.

It was my first day of school. We had just moved from halfway across the country and I knew no one in this new place. Everyone was being nice enough to me but I hadn’t been picked up by a group yet. I therefore was eating my lunch alone when Yanuva spotted me. She must have thought it was a perfect chance.

“Would you like to join our club,” were the first words Yanuva said to me. She sat down across from me. Shizu and Onani joined her. I stared at her.

“What kind of club?” I asked. She looked embarrassed.

“Well we haven’t exactly figured that out yet, we’re just starting out you see. But we need another member.”

“I don’t see why I should join a club when I don’t know what kind of club it’s going to be,” I said.

“Well it will be a social club we think. You know the sort of place where you just go and talk and maybe eat some snacks and stuff. We aren’t sure if we can get a teacher sponsor for such a club though so we may have to scrap that idea though. Please join, we have to have another member.” If I have one fault it isn’t being able to say no to people when they beg me to do something. And she sounded pleading enough to melt the hearts of anyone. Besides she was the first person to ask me to any social event at the school.

“Alright, I’ll join your club if you get it approved,” I said. I have to admit that I thought that I would never hear from them again. Something as disorganized as what they were talking about didn’t hold much promise. I wasn’t accounting for Yanuva’s stubbornness however.

To be continued...