Bus wanker

I ride the bus a lot. Having no car will do that to you.

For the most part, riding the bus is great. You get to zone out and swipe through Instagram as you cruise in the bus lane past bumper-to-bumper traffic. I also love pulling on the 'stop request' cord. In Edinburgh it's just a plastic button, so you can imagine how delighted I am to get to pull the cord again. So much more satisfying. Choo choo!

Image by Takeshita kenji via Wikimedia Commons

There are some things I don't love, however.

• The migraine-inducing air conditioning on full blast. 
• The waiting at bus stops.
• The man swearing aggressively at the driver who gave him flack for being a quarter short. 
• The lack of seat belts. Why aren't there seat belts?

 In high school my friends Dana, Connie and I would regularly take the bus to a thai food restaurant in Bellevue named Jasmine's. It was before anyone east of Lake City even knew about thai food—I swear. We would all order Pad Thai, then jasmine tea and fried ice cream for dessert. It was so grown up.

During one bus journey, a diet coke exploded in my shoulder bag. It had been jostling around in there when my compass—you know, those things you used to draw circles in geometry—pierced it. Stabbed it right through the aluminum! DC sprayed everywhere. I had to get up and ask the driver if he had any napkins. It was HIGHLY embarrassing. 

Another time, Char, Francie and I—ages 14 and 10—tried to take the bus to Bellevue but we got on the wrong one and wound up in Burien. Both start with "B", but other than that, we couldn't have gotten it more wrong. 

That's about it for bus stories! Other than the time a dear friend of mine got banned from all Northshore School District buses for threatening to kill our bus driver. That's the same driver that got told to "F--K OFF" by an otherwise gentle soul when she told him he couldn't bring his didgeridoo on board. 

Oh, and there was that one time in junior high that someone threw someone else's jeans out the bus window. Ninth graders be cray. 

Byeeeeee, 

Madgey


P.S. Here's Dana and I at Jasmine's (or just 'Jasmine' it looks like). Thanks for the photo, Dana!

My shoulder bag (aka 'satchel') also made it in the snap.

Sweatpants

Well, it's been about 15 minutes since I clicked 'New Post', and still no ideas. Usually something comes to me by this point, but not tonight. Instead I'm just staring at the screen and thinking about how nice it will feel when I finally close my eyes and fall fast into a deep, dreamless sleep.

You see, I'm tired. I stayed up late the past few nights watching Housewives and it's finally caught up with me. Sleep deprivation. The worst. I did it to myself, I did, and that's why it really hurts.

Here's something to ponder: from 7th grade through 12th grade—ages 13 to 18—I wore sweatpants and a sweatshirt to school every day.

OK, maybe it was four days a week. But still.

Also, in junior high, I often took things a step further and wore actual pajama bottoms. Fuzzy PJ bottoms in cow print, polka dots or plaid. I remember our assistant principal, Mrs. Riley, tried to enforce a ban. When I caught wind of this, I organized a protest, encouraging everyone to wear PJ bottoms to school one day. Civil disobedience at its finest.

She never said anything to us about it. We didn't get in trouble. She probably thought, "F it, I really don't care" and moved on to more pressing matters.

Other facts about sweatpants:

• Andy only wears them in the house. If he's taking out the garbage, he changes back into jeans.

• Sometimes it's more comfortable to wear them with the pockets inside out. 

• It was common knowledge among Inglemoor High School students that Fred Meyer had the best sweatpants.

• They really are, without a doubt, very unflattering. 

• There's nothing more depressing than when you try on a friend's pair of sweatpants and they're too small. Tight sweatpants is an oxymoron. It's a non sequitur. Or at least it should be. When sweatpants fit snug around the butt, elastic jutting into the muffin top, it's extremely damaging to the self esteem. 

Annual Arrowheadian sleepover. Sweatpants all around.

Goodnight! Yes! Finally! Sleep! I can't wait.

Margaret

P.S. I'd like to thank my parents for never commenting on my decision to dress like a slob for five straight years. I'm sure it was tempting, but if there was ever a time to be hands-off, it was then. The teenage years. Plus, if they'd even so much as hinted that I wear jeans, I would have read them the riot act. I'd probably still be wearing sweatpants daily just to prove a point.

So, that's something to file away for the future. You can't tell a teenager what to wear. They're too sensitive and too headstrong. Plus, it's none of your business. They're basically young adults and they should dress however they want, even if it is embarrassing and unflattering.

THE JOURN

Today I found the journal my friends and I shared in junior high.

We would keep it for about a week before passing it on to the next person. Inside it are anecdotes from the halls of KJH, lots of talk about The Sims, a list of people we hate and regular updates on everyone's crushes.

I thought about sharing an excerpt here in a 'From the Archives' post, but it just didn't feel right. 'The Journ', as we called it, is sacred. Its hallowed pages contain rare, raw insight into the mind of a middle school girl. To share it here would be to betray my 14-year-old self. I just can't do it.

Plus, someone wrote and then highlighted in pink highlighter, "From now on, NO Arrowheadian boys can read this—we can't trust them!"

On the slim chance that an Arrowheadian boy reads my blog (Arrowheadian being our term for people who went to Arrowhead Elementary School), it seems I must honor The Journ's code of secrecy.

The good news is that I also found a poem I wrote around the same time. I read it and was AMAZED at how good it is.

Of course, it's actually terrible. But it's not that terrible. It's far less terrible that I would have expected. If I sat down to write a poem today, I sincerely doubt I'd be able to match it.

Let this be a lesson to us all: there are certain skills we never progress in beyond a junior high level. For most of us, poetry is among them.

Others include:

• Choreographing group dances
• Cursive (fun fact: Brits aren't familiar with the term "cursive". They call it "joined-up writing")
• Summoning the dead via a Ouija board

TGIF tomorrow,
Margaret