Bonjour, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the wonderful world of sickness. I'll be your host for today. Please watch where you step and try not to land in any piles of vomit. If you look to your right, you'll see the wall of pills and water. To your left is the mounds of peppermint tea and comforters. Try not to touch these, or you'll be infected immediately.
Voice In The Mist: That's real pleasant, Weaver. Thanks for sharing that with us.
MistWeaver: I thought so myself. Now hold on a second while I run to the bathroom.
VITM: I take it you weren't at school today?
MW: Considering that it's only 11 15 AM, I think that's a safe assumption.
VITM: So why didn't you ever post mucho to cover up the post from yesterday?
MW: Because the stupid computer crashed yesterday morning while I was in the middle of typing it.
VITM: I suppose that you're going to spend your day off of school catching us up on what's been going on?
MW: Yes, I am. As soon as I'm done my book.
*leaves to finish reading*
*comes back two hours later*
MW: Ah, that was an excellent book. I quite enjoyed it. Now onto the events of the past couple of days.
Wednesday was Youth Group. And this particular Wednesday, I also had a rehearsal for the play I'm stage manager in. Now the day before, it was cold. Very cold. Not cold enough to stop transportation and therefore the busses, but cold enough to make standing outside for the bus an unpleasant experience.
We had all hoped that Wednesday school would be cancelled, because they had told us that anything colder than -41 and that's exactly what would have happened. In fact, Wednesday morning when the radio said that it would be -45 with wind chill and even colder, we all listened to the radio to find out if this was indeed what was happening. Unfortunately, even though nearly all schools outside of Calgary were closed or without busses, ours wasn't. So I reluctantly prepared for the essay I had first thing in the morning, talked to Rebecca (who had talked her mother into letting her stay home), buttoned up my coat, and went outside to wait for the bus. Which came more or less on time. Curses.
The essay was very difficult, I had writer's block, French class was laughable, and English was spent working on a new edition of my book on my laptop. Rehearsal was thankfully cancelled for weather. The reason I was thankful about that fact is that because of the 5 15 ending time of rehearsal and the 6 30 starting time of Youth, I would have had to go straight there and be there for 6 or something. And since it doesn't end until 9 30, I wouldn't have gotten home until 10 or later. But this way, I got to go home! And spend time doing constructive things until twas time to go!
But this was not to be. For my bus driver, Carol, is kinda spastic and the kids on my bus are total telephone-heads. There's this one little bugger in Grade 10 that yells insults at her from his position at the back of the bus. Her efforts to make us respect her are pretty much a failure, mostly from her techniques. For instance, her favorite two things to do are to refuse to move until we're all sitting exactly in the seating plan she made for us, as well as to call the vice-principal, Mr Reynolds, onto the bus to 'chat' with us. Both of these result in delays in getting home, which for those of us with lives is never a good thing. Especially since the vaguely pedophilic Reynolds likes to lean into people to talk to those closer to the back of the bus and otherwise touch us... hands on shoulders, etc. It's creepy.
Today, miraculously, nothing happened to make us be once again the last bus to leave the school. On the other hand, the losers were ina particularly active mood and halfway down the long highway that takes us fromt he middle of nowhere where the school is to the other end of nowhere where Bragg Creek and Redwood are, she suddenly pulled over.
I had abosolutely no idea what was going on, of course, since I was listening to my iRiver at a high volume and reading, but I assumed that she had either finally gotten sick of Ty and was going to beat some sense into him, or someone had thrown something (an action that seemed to particularly piss her off), or they had moved out of the seating plan.
It turned out to be the second one. Someone had thrown a CD at Carol. She sat there for like ten minutes, discussing with herself what she would do. She kept demanding who had done it, but of course no one would confess. I have my suspicions: I'm 95% sure that it was Ty. The fact that he kept marching up and down the rows demanding in a loud, obnoxious, completely insincere voice "who did it?" so that we could get home was a tipoff. That and the fac tthat I sit at the beginning of the 'back' seats, and it came from behind me and behind the guy in back of me. That leaves about 3 double rows of seats: 6 people or so. At the very least, he would have seen who did it.
Finally we got curious and asked what Carol was doing. She replied that she had calle dMr Reynolds and we would wait until he got there to sort everythign out.
For the love of the Earth, we were a 15 minute drive away from the school, in the middle of absolutely nowhere! Not to mention that he had to get ready, put on his coat, and get his stuff before he would even consider leaving the building. We sat there, getting more and more bored, upset, irritated, and all-around unhappy. I was especially worried because if I didn't get home in time, Mama would have already left to pick me up from rehearsal, and she would be mighty unhappy--not to mention worried-- if she got to the school, looked for me everywhere, then had to come all the way back home to find me already there. My mind also kept flicking to how idling a car was one of the worst contributors to pollution in the world. It burned gas and released more toxic fumes than anything else. We were in a huge bus, and we'd been idling for a good 20 minutes or more.
Finally, Reynolds pulled over on the highway in front of us. None of us had ever been so glad to see him in our lives. He attempted to make us fess up (though like I said, only six people even had the possibility of having saw it in a bus of over 50 people), put pressure on us, told us that we'd stay until someone admitted it. When one person pointed out that Carol and Reynolds could get in a lot of trouble for keeping the majority of us, who had no way of even suspecting who it was, from missing appointments, making our parents worry (since we weren't even allowed to call them), even having to go to the bathroom (because we weren't allowed to get off the bus), he said that we shoudl then apply pressure to make them confess.
How the hell were we supposed to do that? Ty was already repeating his 'OKAY. WHO THE FUCK DID IT? I HAVE TO GO HOME AND TAKE A SHIT AND I DONT HAVE TIME FOR THIS.' speech again (which was pure luncheon meat), and we were at a loss. Finally, Dustin (a dude who lives down the street from me) got tired of Reynolds' attempt to look superior and think that he had the upper hand (which he didn't), and proclaimed that he had done it, clap him in leg irons, whatever, just let them get home. Of course, all of us knew that he hadn't.
Reynolds nodded.
"Good. Then we'll have to drive back to the school, call your parents to come pick you up, and then..."
Dustin quickly retracted his statement as the rest of us groaned miserably. Whether he meant that we'd all have to drive back to the school or that Dustin would have to go alone with Reynolds, it was not a desirable thought for anyone.
At this point, I turned back up my music. Nothing would get solved; that was obvious. And I didn't have anything to contribute. I had the urge to warn Carol that she wasn't accomplishing anything when she did things like this, though. All she did was make enemies.
I did find out somethign interesting that day, though. Carol's very pregnant. It was very visible when she stood up to talk to us, but since we had never seen her standing up before, nobody had known.
After telling us that he would take us out of class one by one (all of us, not just the backseat-ers) and talk to us privately in an empty classroom (he was just a little too eager for that, in my opinion) and threatening us with bus reprimand forms (I mean, honestly. He said it and showed them to us liek they were a fate worse than death), he finally left and we got back on the road. I walked in about ten minutes before Mama would have walked out to get me. Luck, eh?
VITM: Maybe she's more spastic because of her pregnancy.
MW: The thought crossed my mind. Reynolds doesn't have that excuse, though.
VITM: So obviously your day sucked up until that point... what about Youth?
MW: The day stopped sucking the minute I got to Youth. Ryan hadn't gone to his school either, and I had threatened revenge. Here's a tip: Never tell Ryan you're threatening revenge on him beforehand.
VITM: What did he do?
MW: When I got there, he was sitting in a chair around a small table. I sat down beside him and he asked me about my revenge. Then he hefted a box of Ferrero Rochers and admitted that he'd just have to eat them all by himself...
VITM: THE MONSTER!
MW: I know. How could he do something like that? The little monster knows how much I like Ferrero Rochers. That was just playing dirty.
VITM: So how did you react?
MW: Much the way you did. And I watched as he took one, slowly unwrapped it... and gave it to me.
VITM: So much for revenge...
MW: Yeah, all unpleasant thoughts kind of dissipated immediately at that point. Especially a minute later when he watched me finish eating the chocolate and then wordlessly handed me the box.
VITM: He what?!?
MW: I kid you not. I asked if he was serious. He replied yes. I stared at him for a minute, then stared at the box, then stared at him again. Then of course, I did the only thing I could do.
VITM: You refused politely but thanked him anyway?
MW: Are you freaking serious? Of course not. We're talking Ferrero Rocher, here. No, I threw myself on top of him and hugged him so tightly that I'm sure if he wasn't in a chair and therefore harder to hug, he would have not been able to breathe even the tiniest bit. Or at least I tried my best.
VITM: That boy is too sweet. He knew exactly how to bribe you.
MW: Yuh huh. And the rest of my evening kinda went straight upwards from there. I was so absolutely in agreement with the topic of the night that the fact that it was from the (completely misinformed, in my opinion) Christian perspective barely even registered. And I also had an epiphany when they read to us about Moses and Pharoah.
VITM: About what?
MW: About the Bible. Now, I don't want anybody Christian who reads this to get offended with anything I say next. It's all my opinion. I can argue for hours over theology with someone who took offense about this, but I don't particularly want to at the moment.
Anyways. What I realized is that the people who got together and wrote the Bible (slightly differently for the Old Testament and the New Testament) simply took every single possible situation they could come up with and put down an example for it. Generally, they put down extremes, but it's basically a well-sewn together compilation of individual situations that, while not necessarily entirely true, are just representations.
Something that does bug me about some Christians is the way that they take everything the Bible says as litterally true, word for word. This applies particularly to the New Testament. I'm not making suggestions about the truthfulness of the book with this statement, I just mean that I don't particularly think that either Jesus or his disciples meant for what they wrote to be taken word for word. Everything is interpreted differently, and I just don't believe that people have interpreted things properly. For one, this all happened so long ago and no one takes into account the properties of the cultures and how different they were from ours. Beyond the surface obvious differences, of course.
But I have no intention of going into my full-fledged religion rant here and now. I'm sure it will come out sooner or later in my blog, but not at this moment.
I think that I'll leave off there for now.
MistWeaver
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