It's really a weird story.
My bus ride was 45 or 50 minutes long. It traversed a rich neighborhood up on the hill, a poorer neighborhood behind the lake, and my middle class neighborhood. It sounds simplistic, but it's how it was.
A couple of kids behind the lake were horrible bullies. They would scream at kids getting on and off the bus with every rude and nasty insult. "Flabby T-ts." "Mole face." "bleacher girl." Relentlessly, every day. They had been held back one or more years, so they were physically bigger than everybody. They had one dude who was on roids and was huge (5/7, 210 pounds ripped kind of frame) as their enforcer. Several of the younger kids behind the lake were conscripted - they were unwilling stooges or they would get beat up. The bus driver looked like a 20 year old Roger Daltry, with hair down to his butt and 5/4ish height.
I was a 145 pound 1st year completely alone.
They pretty much left me alone. Partly because my older sister was considered hot, and partly because I played sports, I suppose.
They used to give people the "treatment," which was code for 4 or 5 of them would pin a kid down and pound on his shoulder until it was bruised.
At some point they got to me. I was tall, so stood up and looked the lead goon in the face and said, "why don't you go pick on Bret? He's your age." Bret was a senior and could handle himself, and was not part of the bully clique. The goon was visibly trying to process the first comment in protest he had ever received, when I saw his eyes change to "fudge-it" and knew he was about to hit me, when condom lips, the hottest girl on the bus, yelled, "yeah Joey, why don't you try that with Bret?"
At which point the goon's brain locked up, he stood there slacked jawed for a minute, then walked away. A small miracle.
Until the next day. Given 24 hours, he came up with a good solution.
One the conscripted lackey's say next to the next day and hit me on the shoulder. I looked at him and said, "hey man, I don't have a problem with you." He said, "yeah, but Joey is going to kick my --s if I don't do this." He hits me again. I say, don't do that again. He does, I hit him in the face, then I got jumped by 6 guys. Bus driver pulled over and yelled and they all went back to their seats.
The next day (and for the next month) I went to school with a pipe taped to my leg. I was left alone until my stop, in 1.5 acre per lot suburbia, with nobody else getting off at my stop, in a day before cell phones, as a lock key kid, knowing I was completely on my own when I stepped off the bus.
I got up to get off the bus, and 6 guys lined up behind me to get off at my stop. I figured I'd try to kill the first guy off the bus, and then find out what happens after here.
Just as I passed the bus driver and started hiking up my pant leg as I was descending the two giant steps, the bus driver stands up and in front of the 6 guys and loudly says, "anybody who wants to get off this bus has to come through me." It was quite an image, that small dude, with his long hair, looking straight up into the vacant eyes of the 6/2 beta bully. They all sat down. That was in March. The rest of the year passed without incident. The following year I had my license and a car, and I almost never rode the bus again.
So what did I do when they spit on that kid? Every day? Not a damn thing, except wonder why he didn't just cross the street to avoid them altogether. I eventually came to understand why he didn't.
