Another One Rides The Bus

Made a bit of a fool of myself in writing class today. Part of what we are required to do during the course of a three-hour workshop is write an impromptu passage on a given topic for 10 or 15 minutes. It's not easy creating something half way decent in such a limited amount of time. Add to that the possibility of being called on to read what you wrote in front of ten of your classmates, and it can get a little sweaty.

The subject of today's class was non-fiction writing. Memoirs, personal essays, and narrative non-fiction. Our first assignment was to write about a "first" that had happened to us in our lives. A first event (i.e., first kiss) or realization (first time you realized your marriage was ending). After an instruction to "keep it clean," I pondered the subject for a couple of minutes and then wrote the following:

It was early September, 1974. A white frost appeared on the grass outside. Fall mornings in southeastern New Hampshire were often quite cold. This must have been why my mother forced me to wear a heavy snorkel coat -- the kind with the synthetic fur-lined hood -- on my first day of school. Against my six-year old protestations, she slid my tiny arms into the wide sleeves and zipped me up tight. After she was satisfied that I would be sufficiently warm for the quarter mile walk to the bus stop, she put on her own coat -- one much thinner than mine, as I recall -- and took my hand.

Sweating like an overloaded pack mule, I grabbed the plastic handle of my Six Million Dollar Man lunchbox, which contained my first school lunch, meticulously prepared by my mother the night before. Recollection is hazy, but more likely than not, it was my favorite, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a pint of Hawaiian Fruit Punch in the thermos.

Out the door we went, the cool New England air hitting my face as the 6:45 a.m. sun peered through tall birch trees, blinding my eyes. We walked down Oak Drive and around the bend, to the bus stop across the street from my best friend Anne's house. She was already there, standing at the edge of the road with her mother. Unlike me, she was smiling and happy, excited to be embarking on this new stage of life. As I stood there, watching Anne's mother snap a picture of the two of us, then one of me alone, it was all I could do not to cry. Looking at my mother, who had tears in her eyes, I felt like I was being cast out of the womb all over again.

The school bus arrived within minutes. Like a death row inmate walking to the gallows, I climbed the black steps, resigned to my fate. My whole life seemed to begin that day. Half way up the steps, I turned back to my mother, gulped down the ball of fear and sadness that had formed in my throat, and matched her melancholy wave.

I corrected a couple of words here and there, but what you see above is pretty much the way I wrote it in class. I gotta tellya, I got a little misty as I was writing it. But what was truly embarrassing was when I had to read it out loud and my voice cracked three times. Ugh. It's funny what bittersweet memories will do to you, even when people are watching.