Sky Fall

Today was the first snowfall for the late autumn season and watching the snow fall from the sky, I was happily reminded of my cat, Monkey's, first experience with falling snow.  More on that in a moment.

Previous readers of this nonsensical blog, will be aware that I injured my brain in a fall a few years ago and while most of my faculties returned unhindered, my memory, sadly, has not.  Most of my long-term memories are gone and I struggle daily with my short-term memory.  So when I recall something that was previously lost, I celebrate the moment in some way.  Tonight, I'm writing a blog about my cat's first experience with the white stuff, as well as some of my childhood memories.  So sit back.  I'll try to make it brief.

From the time I was a teeny infant to my mid-to-late teens, I remember going to bed and waking up to a few inches of beautiful puffy wet snow.  As kids, we'd don our winter boots and coats and run outside to play in the white stuff.  It was a more simple time and the first snowfall would always put smiles on our faces.

In my twenties and thirties, I often recalled going to watch a movie at the old Rainbow Cinemas at the Circle Park Mall.  Go into the theater after driving through a downpour only to exit the movie to discover snow covered cars in the parking lot.  The air was eerily quiet considering how close we were to Eighth Street.  All one could hear is the sound of the wind and the crispy sound of snowflakes landing on other snowflakes.  It was almost magical, until you got into your car and reality suddenly flashed back into the present.

In grade school, at Boughton Elementary, we'd arrive in the morning and the city kids (myself and a hand full of other kids, lived on a farm, so we were bussed into the city), were already hard at work stomping out the wagon wheel pattern for a game we'd play.  Essentially, if a child were standing in the middle, they were safe, but if you stepped out of the center onto the tracks that made up the wheels or the spokes, a marauding player tasked with tagging the runners out.  I was never very good at not getting caught, but even more terrible at tagging people out.  It was kind of a silly game, but fun for a time before computers or game consoles. 😄

A few years ago, I drove school bus.  In fact that's what prompted me to pursuit my current vocation as a city transit worker.  Anyway, not to diverge from the subject at hand.  There were some newly landed immigrants who rode my bus.  They were Middle Eastern and in all likelihood, had never laid eyes upon snow, but watching these little children smiling and laughing as they played with the puffy snowflakes as they drifted downward from the sky, was absolute magic.  Words cannot explain how special that moment was.

As I drove away from the school, I spied those kids still laughing with big smiles on their faces as they played in the snow.  They clearly loved it, unlike another little fella who was panicked at the first snow fall.  He was only a few months old, at the time, so it was expected, I suppose, although it never donned on me until it happened.

I was downstairs watching TV when I heard Monkey run from the front of the house to the kitchen in the back of the house.  I overheard a small murmur, before he ran back to the front of the house.  He continued to do this several more times over the course of a few minutes.  His murmurs and meows growing more and more intense and stressed with each pass.  Finally, he ran downstairs to where I was, looking up at me from the floor, I could tell something was wrong.

I followed him upstairs and this was when I discovered that it was snowing.  Again, like in my youth, big puffy snowflakes, stuck together, falling from the Heavens and all the while, my boy, Monkey, was freaking the f*ck out and rightfully so.  To this sweet little creature, the sky was falling.  To this day, I refer to that moment as Armageddon. 😃

Those days of innocence are long behind us, now.  Nowadays, when it snows or rains, Monkey simply looks at me with disgust, blaming me for the weather instead of fate.

Can you believe he was ever this tiny?

First Name Basis

Like the late Art Linkletter used to say on his program, "Kids say the darndest things."  It's as true today as it was when his version hit the airwaves in the forties and fifties, the only difference being that today's children are a little more educated.  Or at least, they believe they are.

There's a number of children who ride the school bus that seem to speak a lot about toilets, poop and their "male appendages".  One boy, in particular, I've had to warn a number of times, explaining that it was inappropriate to talk about such content in the presence of little girls.  "A good boy," I said, "Wouldn't do that."

To tell the truth, I'm so out of the loop when it comes to kids, nowadays.  They're a far cry from when I was their age.  I want to say it's bad parenting, but in truth, it's probably something in the water that makes them this way.  When I was a little boy getting on the bus, I'd find a seat and sit quietly until we arrived at school.  Today, the kids are hyper as f*ck, and can barely sit still when the climb aboard.  It's crazy, I tell ya.  Crazy.

For the most part, I ignore it, recalling a helpful reminder a friend told me years ago in reference to circumstances beyond our control.  It is what it is.  Five simple single-syllable words that I've valued in the five-plus years since hearing it.  So much so, that I once almost got it tattooed to the palm of my hand.  That way, I could look at it during stressful situations involving stupidity.  A last reminder before slapping my forehead with frustration.  The craziness displayed by the kids, is the same.  Nothing I say or do, will deter them from acting like wild monkeys.  It's not all of them, thankfully, but just enough to drive a man to drink.  But, there's a paycheck in it for me to endure the insanity.  Less than minimum wage, mind you, but in a job market that has very little to offer, it's what I'm stuck with for now...  It is what it is...

This morning presented a break from the constant chirping, hooting and howling that the boys in the front two seats make.  At first I was thankful.  A few fleeting seconds to regain whatever sanity I had left.  That's when I overheard someone singing a song.  It went with the tune of the Oscar Mayer wiener commercial.  You know the one, "My wiener has a first name. It's O-S-C-A-R..," only this one's lyrics were drastically changed.  I only heard a couple verses before I kiboshed it.

"My penis has a first name, it's P-E-N-I-S.  And it makes me laugh when it wears a funny dress."

While it is catchy enough to tap your toe to, I doubt it's a real song.  However, if this kid thought this up on his own, he may have a future writing dirty limericks.  Still, highly inappropriate for a five year old boy to sing in mixed company.

I don't like to squash the laughter and fun that these kids have.  Some of my fondest memories of school was the ride home on the school bus.  Back then, however, we never spoke of such things.  I don't know what to do with these kids.  Grin and bear it, I suppose.  Treat this job like every other job I've ever had that I grew to resent.  Count the hours until the next weekend or day off.  After all, in those inspirational words of my friend: It is what it is...

Failed Promise

The day held such promise when I woke up this morning.  I had an important meeting to attend in the afternoon which pertained to my job as a school bus driver.  At the end of the school year, last June, I discussed with one of the people in the office about the possibility of switching routes.  The one that I'd been driving since getting this job was nice, but my bus is parked all the way across town and I've accumulated more mileage on my vehicle than I have on the bus I'd been driving.  Not to mention the damage I've incurred from passerbys.  My truck wasn't in pristine condition, but it never had all the key scratches, either.  Some brave motherf**ker is doing it.  The street where we're made to park our vehicles for the duration of our routes, is not in the nicest of neighbourhoods.

In addition, the unbearable amount of time that it takes to make the trek home, is almost an hour in some instances.  Ten or fifteen minutes to drive to the bus lot, an hour or more to come home.

So when the mention of different routes being available, with buses already situated at the lot near my house, I was told that it was quite likely I could get one of those, a trade-up in my books, that would ease a shit ton of stress that my feeble mind has endured for the last six months.  So when I woke up this morning, everything seemed brighter.  Full of promise and wonder, however that plane took a serious nose dive when I was handed the route information for the same route as I had in the spring.

"What's this?" I asked, "I was told I'd be getting a new route.  One situated closer to my home."  The woman behind the desk shrugged her shoulders and instructed me to call the boss lady, whom I did manage to approach after the meeting.  She shrugged her shoulders and told me, "We don't have any room for you to park your bus at the north lot." Without further discussion, she turned and proceeded to ignore me.  That's poor management, in my opinion.

I think she misunderstood me, believing that I was requesting to park my bus at the north end, rather than giving me the new route that was promised me in June.  So one of two things needs to happen and happen very soon.  One:  I need to meet with her again and explain more clearly what my request is and was; Or two:  I need to hurry, get my Class 2 license and get a better job.  Clearly, my needs are not being met and therefore, I need to go somewhere where my needs will be met.  I just need to get this reading thing down, otherwise I'm totally f*cked!!

**Throwing more stress onto my already strained mind, during our safety meeting today, it was announced that there has been three instances of school buses being shot at, this year alone, in our fair City of Saskatoon.  I didn't think violence like that existed here, but now I got that bullshit weighing on my mind.  What the f*ck?!?**

Kids Say The God Damnedest Things

For a few months, now, I've been driving a school bus.  Not an ideal vocation, but given it's the only company that would hire me after ten months of unemployment, there are worse jobs to have out there and for far less money.   The hours are fantastic, less than two hours overall, but those are dissected by about six hours.  Six hours that I probably should be using more advantageously than I have, but instead I watch TV and or snooze on the couch.  I have learned a thing or two during this short tenure.  I actually enjoy the driving aspect and plan on parlaying this gig into something that pays a f*ck of a lot better.  Another thing I've learned, although I've always suspected it as the truth.  Kids, for the most part, are dumb as shit!!  Whether it's trying to get them to understand how to sit in a seat straight, so as to not fall out or under the seats in the event of an accident or just getting them to keep their clothes on.  Yes, there's one little trouble maker who likes to remove his pants and shake his booty in his seatmate's face.  I often scratch my head in bewilderment, because I've nothing to bang my head up against.

The other morning, though, one of the troublemakers got on the bus for school.  He's not the strip-down kid, but the tattletale who rats out every other kid on the bus, never admitting to any of his own shortcomings.  He sat across from "stripper"-kid and began telling him about the fantastic life that he and his family were about to embark on.

"My mom made a thousand dollars." he told the children around him.  "She made a thousand dollars!  Do you know how much that is?"

The children around him muttered with confusion, no one piping up to tell him that a thousand dollars really wasn't that much.

"That's enough money that my mom is going to buy a brand new car.  And she's going to get a house.  And she's thinking about getting a limo."

I smiled at the innocence and idiocy of his statements, looking on into the bright sun that was blinding my view of the road.

"A limo," he began to explain to those unaware of what it was, "Is a long car.  It's really long and we all sit in the back.  Only rich people get limousines, and that's what we are now, because my mom made a thousand dollars."

There was a short pause, then he continued with his speech, "Yeah.  We're thinking about building a bouncy castle for my birthday.  We might build two bouncy castles, though.  I'd like to build two.  One that looks like a castle and I don't know what the other should look like yet."

It was about this time that I pulled up to his school and the kids all filed off.  I thought about how kids really don't know the value of a dollar, anymore.  They have shit much too easy, these days.  It reminded me of a TV show where the kids on there spoke of how "it used to be in the olden days".  

"If you wanted to watch a TV show, you had to be there at the exact time to watch it.  There wasn't any recording and watching it later." the character said, shocking all his siblings at the preposterousness of the idea.

I guess it's like Art Linkletter used to say, "Kids say the darnedest things."