Riding the Short Bus

I’m seven years old.  I’m diminished, delayed, and detracting from the rest of the group.  Someone mentions “Special Schools.”  There’s no joy in being seven and labeled remedial.  Slow, worthy even of the r-word?  (Retarded). 

I’m eight years old.  I’m looking up at the ophthalmologist and I can tell he’s waiting for joy.  He thinks a big smile and thanks for the enlightenment are heading his way.  But I’m eight years old and experiencing fury for the first time.  You mean everyone else sees like this? 

So, glasses and straight-A’s and tee-hee-hee at the PTA.  I can’t believe we didn’t know. 

I’m nine years old and Cory’s still on the short bus.  We continue consorting and I tell him he’s not remedial, retarded, rendered unworthy.  But we both know there’s something wrong.  Cory is off.  Cory is beyond-glasses-fixable.  We grow, we lose touch, what’s a nine year-old to do? 

I’m thirty-four years old:  I’ve gone through glasses, bifocals, contacts, laser surgery, and back to glasses.  I prosper.  I am pure selfish energy.  I’m humping the leg of the future with a lust born of ego.  Word of Cory finds me.  He’s stabbed himself to death, finally giving in to voices long loud.  If you hear the words, “Do it, put that knife in your abdomen” thirty million times, eventually you’ll do it.  That’s what was so off, slurs the aging PTA on their afternoon OxyContin.  Schizophrenia!

Back at age eight, I see one conversation with Cory in perfect clarity.  I’d learned of the terms boyfriend and girlfriend, understanding that there was more to it than friendship, but an acknowledgement of something tingly. 

“Do you have a girlfriend?” I asked Cory.

“You’re my girlfriend,” he said.

“No, I’m not!” I informed him, indignant.  “I’m not your girlfriend.  I’m your friend.”

“Oh,” Cory looked abashed, though I wouldn’t have known the word for it at the time.

He turned away then, withdrew as we all did when uncomfortable.  He had voices like little friends to make it all better, or worse.  When glasses wouldn’t help and adolescent girlfriends denied your connection, when fat kids whose mothers called them husky dumped your pudding on your head, again, you always had your voices.  My adolescence led me to see, to gain a crystal vision of the world.  Cory’s primary sense was to hear the voices that stayed true to him from youth, through puberty and into adulthood.  It’s only right that eventually, he should hear what they have to say.