What You Learn on the Bus
By Angela Townsend
April 15, 2024
April 15, 2024
You learn things when your mother chaperones the eighth-grade bus trip.
It would be more accurate to say you are seared with information. You are embroidered with details you cannot remove, not even with a seam-ripper, not even thirty years later. Of course, you have no desire to do such a thing. You learned well.
You learned that Mr. Fulmer, who looked like Rod Stewart, made moonshine in the Hampton Inn. Some medieval experiment with mulberries and Fireball made the Sunshine Team of teachers jostle for the title of “most jocular,” although your mother found it undrinkable.
You learned that Mrs. Patterson, who loved French more than children, was distressed at the thought that the children were watching The Night of the Living Dead at the Hampton Inn. It seemed like naughty good fun, but might it not scorch their green neurons? Was there nothing the Sunshine Team could do?
You learned that Mr. Broom, mean as a power outage, had hazel eyes that really cared when you told a story. Really. Look at him like a person and you will never look at him the same way.
You learned that Mr. Farbman, who was plaid all the way to his skin, thought “Mr. Boombastic” was funny enough to play on repeat at the Hampton Inn. Sufficiently mulberried, Mr. Farbman would propose that even Lord Byron would weep o’er the subtle and majestic lyrics, you are de bun and me am de cheese. Mr. Farbman would repeat this until someone told him he was funny.
You learned that Mr. Fulmer drooled on your mother’s shoulder on the bus ride to the Washington Monument, sounding sad as he repeated, “I want a banana. I wanna.”
You learned that your teachers, whom you adored, showed your mother entirely too much. You already knew that your mother told you entirely too much. You were strangely proud of how quickly the Sunshine Team, teachers of Honors and lions of learning, bonded with your mother.
It came as no surprise. You would not have come to Washington without her, your valet and Valkyrie. You were three years into a field trip with Type 1 diabetes, and you did not aspire to monumental hypoglycemic events at the Lincoln Memorial without your traveling womb. You knew you were childlike. You knew you were knit too tight. It would help to learn that Mr. Fulmer and Mrs. Patterson were scamps and scallions.
“I think the word is ‘rapscallions,’” your best friend Vivek suggests.
“I think I want to call them scallions.” You point at Mr. Farbman, striped in green and brown cattails.
You were here to learn about America’s capital, although your lesson plan included Eugene Grebaldinger’s cinnamon freckles, and mastery of the lyrics to “Mr. Boombastic.” You had earned this trip by virtue of being “Honors.” The most earnest onions of the eighth grade got to go to Washington. It was a rite of passage. It was an Eastbrook Middle School promise. It was highly educational.
You would learn that you cannot curl up in Abraham’s bosom, no matter how large and loving that lap may look.
“It is always safe to tell people that Lincoln is your favorite president,” Mr. Fulmer declares on the big steps. “And indeed, he was the liberator and the laureate.”
Your mother had introduced you to poet laureates since you could read, since she first fed you strands of Ferlinghetti and peaches from Prufrock. You nod at Mr. Fulmer. You would like to be a poet and a liberator like Lincoln and your mother.
Mr. Fulmer is strutting, his hair iridescent as the angels who make people “fall down as though dead” in the Bible. “But I challenge you to choose your own favorite president.”
Eugene Grebaldinger is choosing his own adventure with the blondest girl in the eighth grade, and you wish she would grow Martin van Buren’s sideburns.
“Washington?” Mr. Fulmer shrugs. “Popular. Easy. Woodrow Wilson?” He strokes his chin, which Boyd Greegan said looks like buttocks, something you cannot now unsee. “Interesting. Grover Cleveland? You will need to specify whether you mean the first or the second time around.”
Mr. Farbman attempts a joke about Nixon, which Mr. Fulmer ignores. You learn instantly that Mr. Fulmer is all the cool kids.
Lincoln’s lap is too small to keep you any longer, so the bus lurches south. Josh Lange and Maya Ramirez are moles on your mother when the Washington Monument elevator goes fast.
You learn that everyone gets small when they think they may vomit. You already knew that your mother is a “non-anxious presence,” which cooperatively curls into the acronym “N.A.P.” Your mother is in college to be a psychologist, and she learns about blots and psychopathy by practicing diagnostic instruments on you. You are in the "99th percentile” of all the intelligences except spatial, where you ring the more rusted bells on the curve. Your mother says God did this to keep you humble. Your mother reminds you that “to whom much has been given, of her much is asked.”
Your mother has the gift of being the N.A.P., and kids cooler than yourself shelter in her serenity. You have already learned that it’s a gift to the Honors flock when your mother chaperones things.
“Hey, you got the Happy Book?” Vivek, who is made entirely of eyes and elbows, jabs you. You pull out the yellow notebook and smooth the pages. Some scallion, probably Eugene, has crumpled them.
Vivek begins scribbling, ignoring the tiny whooshing window as you ascend the Monument.
“Vivek, you’re missing—”
“—I know, but I gotta write this down.”
You understand. You created the Happy Book in sixth grade, back when you were first diagnosed, back before people talked about “gratitude journals” or studied their benefits. You just wanted to write down all the lovely things that happened, and then you wanted to invite all of Honors to contribute. You filled book after book together, always yellow, always frantic. Sometimes teachers wrote in them. Nobody signed their names, but you could tell from the handwriting and the jokes. Sometimes writing in the Happy Book was urgent.
You don’t learn much at the Washington Monument, except that people get slaphappy when they realize they will not vomit after all. The moles detach from your mother.
It’s time for the class picture. Mr. Reinhardt is proud to explain how this will work. It will be a panoramic shot, a camera on wheels capturing all of Honors, so we must remain very still. You stand between your mother and Vivek and try to release all the thunderstorms in your arms. Your blood sugar has behaved, exhorted by granola bars and studious avoidance of pizza. You are anxious because you are Daisy, but the N.A.P. keeps you in the moment.
You are very still, but someone screams. You will later learn that Mr. Broom crouched like a cartoon and ran behind the Sunshine Team, goosing Mr. Reinhardt. Mr. Broom does not appear in the photo, a glaring gap between Mr. Fulham and Mrs. Pearl. Mr. Reinhardt appears to be in anguish, his potato face wrenched into its constituent hash browns.
No one needs to teach each 8th grade Honors class that Mr. Reinhardt is what your mother calls a “sad sack.” Mr. Farbman may be green, but Mr. Reinhardt is toasted and tired. A tuft of grey frizz rises from the center of his forehead, and students since Martin van Buren have called him “the ol’ unicorn.” You feel sorry for Mr. Reinhardt. You wonder if he writes in the Happy Book.
You are feeling funny and thinking about FDR. Your mother says that FDR dressed the Beatitudes in work clothes. The New Deal had layers of love propping up those programs. The world was afraid, and a jovial genius worked hard, even though he was very sick. His wife was a poet and a prophet and one of the people whose words make it into your lunchbox on your mother’s neatly-inscribed neon index cards.
“You OK, Daisy?” Your mother is studying your face.
“I’m OK!”
“Your freckles look weird.” This is her shorthand for “I think your blood sugar is dropping.”
You are still learning the line between “fine” and “low,” between “I have another 30 minutes like this” and “stop the bus.” You squint at the horizon lines in your own body, still an unfamiliar landscape. You have not yet learned to trust the early warning system of a numb tongue-tip and melted knees. You walk on, a fleck on the body of Honors. You have learned that the 8th grade trip slows for no body.
“I’m OK.”
Everyone is getting their hands stamped, and Mr. Farbman is telling some confusing joke about gargoyles. You have reached the National Cathedral, and the N.A.P. swoons.
“Oh honey, look.”
From the time this trip was an asterisk on the calendar, you knew this was the highlight. Your mother’s sentences bumped into each other when she talked about getting to see it in person. It was bold and holy, grinning right at the big gut of the nation. It was for everybody.
Your mother made pies for the church bazaar and carried around an encyclopedia of Bible verses arranged by topic. The spine was broken, and the section on “LOVE OF GOD, THE” was grey from regular consultation. Your mother had a few beefs with St. Paul and let you become a vegetarian. Your mother loved Jesus and wrote poems about his face in all the faces.
The last thing you see is the stamp inking your hand.
“Mom, I can’t see.”
“What?”
“I can’t see anything. I don’t know what happened.” You feel her arm. You remember the bloody woman grabbing Jesus’ robe. “I can’t see. I’m really low. It came on fast.”
Everything is black, but your non-anxious mother sanctifies the sidewalk. You sit together, eating grape glucose tablets until your tongue is chalky, but you can feel it again. You feel the wind of pants and people whooshing. You wonder if Vivek knows you are missing. Your mother rubs your hands, which have turned cold.
“You’re OK. We’re OK. Just a bad low.”
You make each other laugh by singing “Tomorrow” and “Mr. Boombastic” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” which are all completely compatible. You confirm your vote for FDR.
You will learn that your mother was summoning angels, flocks and flotillas of them, jousting with Jesus to have mercy on her daughter. You will learn that your mother can forget the National Cathedral when your freckles go missing. You will learn that Mr. Farbman bought your mother a little guidebook in the gift shop.
You will not learn any of this for thirty years, and you will not be allowed to apologize for denying your mother the highlight.
“Stop it.” Her Brooklyn accent emerges from the back closet, where she keeps all the old vestments. “It’s just a building. God is on the move with us. I can see stained glass anytime.”
You learn that you weren’t a little baby to ask your mother to chaperone the 8th grade bus trip. It would be more accurate to say that you were a gigantic baby. Someday you will learn that this condition is as chronic as diabetes and holiness and being a scallion. You learn how cool this is. You write it in the book over and over again.
It would be more accurate to say you are seared with information. You are embroidered with details you cannot remove, not even with a seam-ripper, not even thirty years later. Of course, you have no desire to do such a thing. You learned well.
You learned that Mr. Fulmer, who looked like Rod Stewart, made moonshine in the Hampton Inn. Some medieval experiment with mulberries and Fireball made the Sunshine Team of teachers jostle for the title of “most jocular,” although your mother found it undrinkable.
You learned that Mrs. Patterson, who loved French more than children, was distressed at the thought that the children were watching The Night of the Living Dead at the Hampton Inn. It seemed like naughty good fun, but might it not scorch their green neurons? Was there nothing the Sunshine Team could do?
You learned that Mr. Broom, mean as a power outage, had hazel eyes that really cared when you told a story. Really. Look at him like a person and you will never look at him the same way.
You learned that Mr. Farbman, who was plaid all the way to his skin, thought “Mr. Boombastic” was funny enough to play on repeat at the Hampton Inn. Sufficiently mulberried, Mr. Farbman would propose that even Lord Byron would weep o’er the subtle and majestic lyrics, you are de bun and me am de cheese. Mr. Farbman would repeat this until someone told him he was funny.
You learned that Mr. Fulmer drooled on your mother’s shoulder on the bus ride to the Washington Monument, sounding sad as he repeated, “I want a banana. I wanna.”
You learned that your teachers, whom you adored, showed your mother entirely too much. You already knew that your mother told you entirely too much. You were strangely proud of how quickly the Sunshine Team, teachers of Honors and lions of learning, bonded with your mother.
It came as no surprise. You would not have come to Washington without her, your valet and Valkyrie. You were three years into a field trip with Type 1 diabetes, and you did not aspire to monumental hypoglycemic events at the Lincoln Memorial without your traveling womb. You knew you were childlike. You knew you were knit too tight. It would help to learn that Mr. Fulmer and Mrs. Patterson were scamps and scallions.
“I think the word is ‘rapscallions,’” your best friend Vivek suggests.
“I think I want to call them scallions.” You point at Mr. Farbman, striped in green and brown cattails.
You were here to learn about America’s capital, although your lesson plan included Eugene Grebaldinger’s cinnamon freckles, and mastery of the lyrics to “Mr. Boombastic.” You had earned this trip by virtue of being “Honors.” The most earnest onions of the eighth grade got to go to Washington. It was a rite of passage. It was an Eastbrook Middle School promise. It was highly educational.
You would learn that you cannot curl up in Abraham’s bosom, no matter how large and loving that lap may look.
“It is always safe to tell people that Lincoln is your favorite president,” Mr. Fulmer declares on the big steps. “And indeed, he was the liberator and the laureate.”
Your mother had introduced you to poet laureates since you could read, since she first fed you strands of Ferlinghetti and peaches from Prufrock. You nod at Mr. Fulmer. You would like to be a poet and a liberator like Lincoln and your mother.
Mr. Fulmer is strutting, his hair iridescent as the angels who make people “fall down as though dead” in the Bible. “But I challenge you to choose your own favorite president.”
Eugene Grebaldinger is choosing his own adventure with the blondest girl in the eighth grade, and you wish she would grow Martin van Buren’s sideburns.
“Washington?” Mr. Fulmer shrugs. “Popular. Easy. Woodrow Wilson?” He strokes his chin, which Boyd Greegan said looks like buttocks, something you cannot now unsee. “Interesting. Grover Cleveland? You will need to specify whether you mean the first or the second time around.”
Mr. Farbman attempts a joke about Nixon, which Mr. Fulmer ignores. You learn instantly that Mr. Fulmer is all the cool kids.
Lincoln’s lap is too small to keep you any longer, so the bus lurches south. Josh Lange and Maya Ramirez are moles on your mother when the Washington Monument elevator goes fast.
You learn that everyone gets small when they think they may vomit. You already knew that your mother is a “non-anxious presence,” which cooperatively curls into the acronym “N.A.P.” Your mother is in college to be a psychologist, and she learns about blots and psychopathy by practicing diagnostic instruments on you. You are in the "99th percentile” of all the intelligences except spatial, where you ring the more rusted bells on the curve. Your mother says God did this to keep you humble. Your mother reminds you that “to whom much has been given, of her much is asked.”
Your mother has the gift of being the N.A.P., and kids cooler than yourself shelter in her serenity. You have already learned that it’s a gift to the Honors flock when your mother chaperones things.
“Hey, you got the Happy Book?” Vivek, who is made entirely of eyes and elbows, jabs you. You pull out the yellow notebook and smooth the pages. Some scallion, probably Eugene, has crumpled them.
Vivek begins scribbling, ignoring the tiny whooshing window as you ascend the Monument.
“Vivek, you’re missing—”
“—I know, but I gotta write this down.”
You understand. You created the Happy Book in sixth grade, back when you were first diagnosed, back before people talked about “gratitude journals” or studied their benefits. You just wanted to write down all the lovely things that happened, and then you wanted to invite all of Honors to contribute. You filled book after book together, always yellow, always frantic. Sometimes teachers wrote in them. Nobody signed their names, but you could tell from the handwriting and the jokes. Sometimes writing in the Happy Book was urgent.
You don’t learn much at the Washington Monument, except that people get slaphappy when they realize they will not vomit after all. The moles detach from your mother.
It’s time for the class picture. Mr. Reinhardt is proud to explain how this will work. It will be a panoramic shot, a camera on wheels capturing all of Honors, so we must remain very still. You stand between your mother and Vivek and try to release all the thunderstorms in your arms. Your blood sugar has behaved, exhorted by granola bars and studious avoidance of pizza. You are anxious because you are Daisy, but the N.A.P. keeps you in the moment.
You are very still, but someone screams. You will later learn that Mr. Broom crouched like a cartoon and ran behind the Sunshine Team, goosing Mr. Reinhardt. Mr. Broom does not appear in the photo, a glaring gap between Mr. Fulham and Mrs. Pearl. Mr. Reinhardt appears to be in anguish, his potato face wrenched into its constituent hash browns.
No one needs to teach each 8th grade Honors class that Mr. Reinhardt is what your mother calls a “sad sack.” Mr. Farbman may be green, but Mr. Reinhardt is toasted and tired. A tuft of grey frizz rises from the center of his forehead, and students since Martin van Buren have called him “the ol’ unicorn.” You feel sorry for Mr. Reinhardt. You wonder if he writes in the Happy Book.
You are feeling funny and thinking about FDR. Your mother says that FDR dressed the Beatitudes in work clothes. The New Deal had layers of love propping up those programs. The world was afraid, and a jovial genius worked hard, even though he was very sick. His wife was a poet and a prophet and one of the people whose words make it into your lunchbox on your mother’s neatly-inscribed neon index cards.
“You OK, Daisy?” Your mother is studying your face.
“I’m OK!”
“Your freckles look weird.” This is her shorthand for “I think your blood sugar is dropping.”
You are still learning the line between “fine” and “low,” between “I have another 30 minutes like this” and “stop the bus.” You squint at the horizon lines in your own body, still an unfamiliar landscape. You have not yet learned to trust the early warning system of a numb tongue-tip and melted knees. You walk on, a fleck on the body of Honors. You have learned that the 8th grade trip slows for no body.
“I’m OK.”
Everyone is getting their hands stamped, and Mr. Farbman is telling some confusing joke about gargoyles. You have reached the National Cathedral, and the N.A.P. swoons.
“Oh honey, look.”
From the time this trip was an asterisk on the calendar, you knew this was the highlight. Your mother’s sentences bumped into each other when she talked about getting to see it in person. It was bold and holy, grinning right at the big gut of the nation. It was for everybody.
Your mother made pies for the church bazaar and carried around an encyclopedia of Bible verses arranged by topic. The spine was broken, and the section on “LOVE OF GOD, THE” was grey from regular consultation. Your mother had a few beefs with St. Paul and let you become a vegetarian. Your mother loved Jesus and wrote poems about his face in all the faces.
The last thing you see is the stamp inking your hand.
“Mom, I can’t see.”
“What?”
“I can’t see anything. I don’t know what happened.” You feel her arm. You remember the bloody woman grabbing Jesus’ robe. “I can’t see. I’m really low. It came on fast.”
Everything is black, but your non-anxious mother sanctifies the sidewalk. You sit together, eating grape glucose tablets until your tongue is chalky, but you can feel it again. You feel the wind of pants and people whooshing. You wonder if Vivek knows you are missing. Your mother rubs your hands, which have turned cold.
“You’re OK. We’re OK. Just a bad low.”
You make each other laugh by singing “Tomorrow” and “Mr. Boombastic” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” which are all completely compatible. You confirm your vote for FDR.
You will learn that your mother was summoning angels, flocks and flotillas of them, jousting with Jesus to have mercy on her daughter. You will learn that your mother can forget the National Cathedral when your freckles go missing. You will learn that Mr. Farbman bought your mother a little guidebook in the gift shop.
You will not learn any of this for thirty years, and you will not be allowed to apologize for denying your mother the highlight.
“Stop it.” Her Brooklyn accent emerges from the back closet, where she keeps all the old vestments. “It’s just a building. God is on the move with us. I can see stained glass anytime.”
You learn that you weren’t a little baby to ask your mother to chaperone the 8th grade bus trip. It would be more accurate to say that you were a gigantic baby. Someday you will learn that this condition is as chronic as diabetes and holiness and being a scallion. You learn how cool this is. You write it in the book over and over again.
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Angela Townsend is the Development Director at Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, Paris Lit Up, Pleiades, The Razor, and Terrain.org, among others. Angie has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 33 years, laughs with her poet mother every morning, and loves life affectionately.
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Author's Note:
“What You Learn on the Bus” gives our heroine a glimpse of the secret that makes the whole world safer, even when you are in the eighth grade. Every living creature is “a gigantic baby,” full of yearning and capable of tender heroism. This story is particularly dear to me for the relationship between mother and daughter. Their “portable cathedral” was inspired by my bond with my own mother, my “poet and liberator” to this day.
My favorite lines:
“Look at him like a person and you will never look at him the same way.”
“You will learn that your mother can forget the National Cathedral when your freckles go missing.”
“(Y)ou were a gigantic baby. Someday you will learn that this condition is as chronic as diabetes and holiness and being a scallion. You learn how cool this is. You write it in the book over and over again.”
My favorite lines:
“Look at him like a person and you will never look at him the same way.”
“You will learn that your mother can forget the National Cathedral when your freckles go missing.”
“(Y)ou were a gigantic baby. Someday you will learn that this condition is as chronic as diabetes and holiness and being a scallion. You learn how cool this is. You write it in the book over and over again.”