A boy feels scared whenever he sees the bus carrying the Special Needs students go by his house.
I always get a hitch in my gut and feel fear creeping up my spine whenever I see The Bus go lumbering by my house on school mornings. I can remember the number of the Bus..Bus #17.., and while it is yellow like most school buses, it isn't nearly as long, and it has a special lift that can lift kids who are in wheelchairs onto the bus if they can't walk.
Myself and my friends call the bus The Retard Bus because that is exactly what it is. A lot of the kids (but not all) are retarded, and this is why we call the Special Needs bus the Retard Bus.
I always get scared whenever I see the kids in the windows; some of them look scary with their twisted features, their crippled bodies, or misshapen limbs; and some of them wear helmets on their heads, making them look like small aliens from outer space. Some of them make horrible noises, and hearing them does little to settle my fear about the Special Needs kids.
Some of the other kids look basically okay enough, but they walk on sticks or metal frames or have metal attached to their skinny legs; and they walk all wrong and funny; and some also talk with their hands, their hands going a million miles an hour. Still others do not see, and their eyes are cloudy or are hidden behind thick glasses; and they use dogs or canes to help them get around. Or there are those kids who can do none of these things; and they sit in their wheelchairs, looking more like big diapered babies than kids my age or older. They can't do anything for themselves, and they will probably never BE able to do things on their own because they are so crippled up.
The kids are Special Needs because they were either born that way, or they were in accidents or were very sick, and this caused their bodies to stop working right; and some were also abused, and the abuse caused their bodies or brains to become damaged, and now they are no longer the same. Some of the kids (like Ronee' Le-Anne Reaux, for example) are super smart and go to regular school, but she is Special Needs and rides the Special Needs bus to her school; but the others (like her brother, Johnny, for example) go to Morningside Academy for handicapped kids, and they ride the bus, too, every day. Ronee' is okay, and so are most of her brothers and sisters, but a lot of the other kids scare me because they look so different than I do, and it makes me uneasy. I never know what some of the kids are going to do or how they are going to act, and I guess this is what makes me so scared of them.
Now, ma, she tells me that the Special Needs kids are kids too, just like I am, but because of some circumstance or unfortunate incident in their lives, they are handicapped; but I find that hard to accept, especially if one of them throws a seizure or poops in their diapers and smells like rotting onions. I also find it hard to accept these kids when they look so much different than me. It looks like some of them were put together all wrong; and it is as though God made a mistake in His putting these kids together, and it makes me uneasy.
Until I saw The Bus or met kids like Johnny and Ronee' or the rest of the Sandusky bunch or kids like Alfie Dugas or Reggie E. Taylor, I was really never around handicapped kids all that much; and I guess this is one of the big reasons why I feel so uncomfortable around them. They look or act different than I do, and try as I might to try to like them or accept them, I still find it hard, and whenever I see the Bus go by I still feel scared; and I wonder why some kids have to have it so bad in life.
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Reviewed by Simon Thurlow
5/15/2004
Superbly powerful write once more Karen...as only you can
heartbreaking write...if this fellow would just get to know the children on the bus, he'd find out they're kids like him...only they have special needs. all of us have hidden disabilities...and fear of the unknown is just one of them. *tears* this one made me cry.
This book was written for children to stress the importance of being able to choose who gets to hug or touch them and being able to say NO if they don't want to be hugged or touched.
I always get a hitch in my gut and feel fear creeping up my spine whenever I see The Bus go lumbering by my house on school mornings. I can remember the number of the Bus..Bus #17.., and while it is yellow like most school buses, it isn't nearly as long, and it has a special lift that can lift kids who are in wheelchairs onto the bus if they can't walk.
