Kids Can Be So Cruel!

Ok, folks, I know you didn't ask for it, but tonight you're getting a double dose. The thoughts come and I have to put them SOMEwhere, lol. So I'll put them here where only the bravest souls come.

Kids can be so cruel. I know. I work with them allllllll day long. You know. You've been one or you know some. It's just plain and simple. Kids can be cruel. Of course, largely that's because kids are so egocentric by nature. It's hard for them to see beyond "me." But I don't care about that tonight. This isn't a philosophical blog-fest. Tonight is story time.

So come on in and get comfy. Bring a cup of your favorite. I'll make mine Butterfinger Hot Cocoa. Rich, buttery, chocolatey, and smoooooooooooth. If only it weren't so hot.

Anyway, come on in. Let's share childhood traumas. I'll start.

Tonight, I was reminded of a childhood "trauma." I won't take you down the rabbit trail that reminded me of it, but will cut back to somewhere around 1980. Old enough to care, but young enough and small enough to not do a darn thing about it.

My family and I lived on a farm. You remember if you read those childhood diary entries. (I need to go through some more and see if there's any that would be worth the keystrokes, lol.) We lived on a farm that was, I think, eight miles out of town. And so, we were doomed to ride the schoolbus. Kids, for some reason, WANT to ride on a school bus. My own do. My kindies that don't get to ride the bus talk about it. I don't get it, but they want to. Obviously they haven't had my experiences.

There was a boy who rode our school bus. His name was Ricky. Ricky always earned a "place of honor" on the first day of every school year. It was the front row seat to the right of the driver. Right where he could be kept in check. That right there tells you something.

I must say that as kids, we all usually thought Ricky was a hoot. Even us rule followers did. Because frankly he was just plain funny. So outrageously "bad" that it was hilarious. We had a bus driver that my brother and I called Bat-Max. He was not our favorite human but an authority to be endured. We had to write a few too many "lines" for him. "I talk too much and make too much noise." Front and back, every line, 2 pages. Sheesh. I have better things to do than that, Bat-Max.

One boy would write a bunch of Max's standard lines (like "I talk too much and make too much noise.") over the summer and he'd stash them in his wallet. Then when Max told him he had to write them, he'd whip them out of his wallet and hand them over. That......well.........angered Max. lol

Anyway, Bat-Max is one of the reasons that the rest of us adored Ricky. Ricky lived to be the bane of Bat-Max's existence. Ricky would get off the bus and we'd drive on down the road, then turn around and have to drive back past Ricky's house. That was a mistake. Why the driver didn't wait and drop him off on his way past the second time, I'll never know. But Max would drop Ricky off, go down the road, turn around, and come back. During those few minutes, Ricky wasted no time. He did things like go and get his bow and arrow and wait in hiding for Max to drive by and he'd see if he could shoot through the driver's window. (If I recall they were just the suction cup arrows, but they ticked Max off.) Or he'd go find his football and the tee. Stand back in hiding and try to time it out just right to punt that ball into the drivers' side window. A startling effect. Max fumed. We laughed hysterically....at least inwardly. We feared "lines."

But really, Ricky was a bit of a pest. If he finds this blog and reads it, I think he'd be the first to admit it...unless he's suffered serious amnesia.

And this pestiness leads to my little story of trauma.

Now I know you'll find it hard to believe but I was a very scrawny young girl. Imagine that. Skin and bones. I got more "the wind could blow you away" lines than you could imagine. And I wasn't really tall either. Almost ALWAYS on the front row of the class picture. It was life, though. For the most part I didn't care. That said, like many kids I was pretty self-conscious.

Well somewhere around 1980, Ricky got it in his head that I was the new victim. No arrows shot at me. No footballs punted at me. No. He pulled out all the stops. .................................................................... He called me names!

Not Skinny. Not Bones. Not ... not ... Bitty Pants. (No, we can thank my relatives for that one, though.) No, Ricky was too creative for that. No simple name calling would do for Ricky.

One day I got on the bus, completely unexpectant of Ricky abuse. But it was my day. My turn. Ricky was looking for new prey and he found it. His name for me? Ig of I, The Wicked Cambodian.

Lovely name, isn't it? I know you're all terribly jealous. Talk about taking a person by surprise. It took me a while to even process the name. But it wouldn't be all that bad if he stopped with naming me "Ig of I, The Wicked Cambodian." Oh well. Who cares, right?

No no. Name calling was not enough. Every day when I got on the bus, if Ricky was paying attention, he would let out this horrendous shriek of "Ig-uh-ig-uh-iiiiiiiiiiiii!"(all pronounced with short i, like you hear in "inch.") He somehow thought that was my battle cry or something. It was the sound, according to Ricky, that the Wicked Cambodian made.

Now that would really be enough, wouldn't it? But it didn't stop there. Ok, it did for Ricky, but it didn't for me. No sir. We could leave that gem in the past, if it were left to Ricky. But it wasn't.

My sweet, protective, big sister decided she liked the name "Iggie." Pardon me. Make that "Ig of I," again with the short i. (Like it matters.) And she didn't just call me that for a while. To this day she calls me "Ig." I've quit fighting it. She taught her four children to call me "Aunt Ig." lol I call her house. They answer the phone and yell, "MOM! It's IG!" I roll my eyes and give her grief when she gets to the phone. She even went so far a few years ago to demand that I open an email account with "Ig_of_I" in the address, because she insisted it was the only place she'd write me.

Yeah, sticks and stones may break your bones, but names will drive you nuts!!

So...go ahead...unload your childhood traumas. I'm listening.

P.S. - I totally don't care about "Ig" anymore. It's just her name for me. And she doesn't shriek it like a battle cry, so it's easier on the ears. :D