Yet another mile marker on the road to Hell

One can get to know their neighborhood simply by waiting for the bus in the morning on the way to work. Though a formulaic methodology, the worker drones plugging along in their daily routines can present a nice and predicatable cadence you can depend on for structure and assurance that the fabric of reality, though threadbare, maintains its integrity. You see the same faces, behaviors, quirks, etc.

Every once and a while, the picture changes a little. A new face appears. An old face is no longer seen. You might make an association that you never noticed before, such as family dysfunction or, if you're really lucky, a seedy love triangle (this type of thing is more akin to life as a retail clerk in a shopping mall).

My neighborhood is a rather upscale collection of people and their stories. The one I pay closest attention to is the market for private education as the various busses from a variety of language, international, IGCSE, and American diploma schools (all with their names in bold lettering and color combinations on the sides) weave a complicated knot through the web of streets in my area. Busses in various stages of depreciation give a keyhole view into the marketing strategies and levels of success experienced by this growing market of proprietary educational instituitions.

One such bus, the school must be a national one as the lettering is in Arabic and I'm to lazy to learn to read it, is an older model and tells me that the school is likely underfunded. It's in dire need of a new paint job, the balding tires could probably be replaced, it has a layer of filth coating the unusually large windows...likely a leftover import from European communist block nations. Air conditioning and curtains are obviously not an option with this model. Every morning, near my own bus stop, it picks up a teenage boy with Down's Syndrome. My guess is that this is a school for children with developmental conditions.

Ok. The going to Hell bit.

It's the retard bus! The short bus. The little yellow straight jacket that SPED through the neighborhood. It, but mostly its passengers, is the object of insidious ridicule by cruel teenagers and the tragically uncultured. But if you've ever been there, laughed at a joke, donned a particular mug mocking the challenged to make a friend laugh, launched a spit-wad, WHATEVER! You're not that far removed! No matter how much professional training, maturation, the number of relationships you've developed with the challenged and their families, regardless the breadth of your politically correct vocabulary, you are going to see something that will make you laugh (though it might only be internally). I'm sorry, I don't buy the whole "I left that part of me behind" bullshit. It's part of your development, it's part of you. Nobody bought the jive when David Duke made a run for office. Charles Colson is still rubbing elbows with his brethren. I know I saw something this morning that made me laugh. Two boys were in a fist fight on this particular bus as it waited for the child with Down's. All I could do while watching was giggle under my breath,

"The retards are fightin' on the short bus!"