The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round

Stuck in traffic, I have the good fortune of being adjacent to a school bus full of first graders. Being young and presumably bored, the kids stare at me. Being mature and equally bored, I respond in the only appropriate manner: sticking my tongue out. In no time, dozens of youthful faces are smooshed against the bus' windows, their expressions playfully antagonistic. I do my best to keep up, alternating between acting annoyed and snarling. During this time, I decide that I love kids, especially when several feet and a couple sheets of glass stand between us. My opinion changes, however, when I notice one kid making an obscene gesture toward me. While I had been enjoying the innocent distraction, seeing a child of about seven make a jacking-off motion is disturbing. Fuck this kid for ruining our chaste fun with an explicit signal; at his age I didn't even know where to find my own penis. Upset, I turn my head back to the road.

That is, until it occurs to me that the kid was merely asking, furiously with a hand, for me to honk my horn. I played that game on the road at that age. And at my disillusioned, perverted age of twenty-two, I read it as something sexual. I want to be in first grade again.