My neighbor, in her desperation, knocked on my front door. I looked through the peep hole, because when you live where we live, you're not going to NOT look throuh the peephole.
Sometimes I look thru the peephole just to spy on the drug deals going down across the corridor....it's a little light into the seedy world outside. I totally see how reality shows came to be.
Anyway, I looked and saw Gonul. (Who I had been calling her Gotall, because that is how she pronounces it.) She was chewing her lip.
I opened the door and smiled. She said without stopping for air, "I have question for you can you walk my kids to the bus stop in the mornings I can pay you each week."
I said "Uhm, sure."
She said "It is not all of my kids, just my daughter and my son. The udder two is going with me to the schools."
I nodded and said "ok." Thinking, Wow. pay me to walk the kids to the BUS STOP.
She said "Dey are very independents, Dey do not need to be much attention, ok? Just knock on the door and then dey walk with you to bus stop."
I nodded and said "Should be no problem."
She shoved a wad of cash in my hand. I said "Oh! Uhm, ok."
She smiled and said "It starts on the monday ok?"
I nodded.
I realized, I knew none of the kids names. Let alone the 2 I was going to just follow to the bus stop.
I woke up on Monday morning, not really putting any thought into walking the kids to the bus stop. I drank my cup of coffee, and headed upstairs to knock on the door.
I was greeted (after 4 knocks) by the son. He smiled. I said "Hello! I'm here to walk you to the bus."
He said "Jasemine is sick today. No school for her." And flounced himself onto their red sectional sofa.
I always find it interesting to go into someone's house. It says a lot about the people who live there.
Clean, dirty, decorated, not...etc... says more about them than their words ever do.
This apartment was scarely decorated. In fact, there was one picture on the wall. In the dining room.
It is of muted bown dogwood blooms. The only color in the apartment is radiating from the red sofa.
It was sparce like people don't really LIVE there.
Jasemine came out of the bedroom. She's 11. She said "I'm sick, so Mommy said I don't have to go to school.But Janet is still going to school."
I nodded.
They get their shoes on. And we start to walk. Tehran the little boy decides, that running is called for. He runs willy nilly around the parking lot.
He runs into the street daring cars to hit him People were rolling down their windows to yell at me "Hey LADY! WATCH your KID!"
I yelled back "I'm NOT ANYONE'S MOTHER! Man!"
Meanwhile, Tehran runs his little ass across the road and around the apartment building over there. He runs back across and around another building, missing the bus.
Janet, his older sister looked exasperated, and defeated.
I said "Does he always do this?"
She shook her head "No. He runs, but never like this."
She chased him. I shrugged to the mom there with her son. I said "Their mom said I just had to walk them here."
I looked up and see Tehran booking down the street into the other apartment complex behind ours.
Right down the double yellows, as though he was on the brick road hell bent for Oz.
I had no choice. I had to follow him, full sprint, in flip flops.
I was thinking "If this child was mine, I'd crack his ass in the other direction."
Needless to say, we missed the bus.
The lovely bus driver? Well, She whirled back around in time for me to shove him onto the diesel guzzlin' bus. She was an angel to come back for him, because you know she was probably saying Thank Yous to the Man up stairs for the kid missing the bus.
I finally grabbed him.
I said "You have been naughty." As I schlepped him up the stairs of the bus. He laughed. The spawn laughed at the fact that I acknowledged his horrid behavior.
Mike called while I was walking back. Dripping in sweat, running in flip flops is like a double work out. I said "I'm exhaused!"
He said "Take a nap, if you want."
I said "I'm too pissed to sleep. If we EVER have a child like that, it will be MORE than spanking. You just don't know how bad he is. He ran around the Lane's building smiling, Michael, he was SMILING the entire time."
I earned all that money in the one day.
Day Two.
Janet opens the door. And that child has eyes that will win you over in a minute. She's sweet and simply everything I love about little girls. Very precise, very grown up, motherly, but still very much a child who loves stickers and such. I would want a daughter like her.
She smiled and said "We ate breakfast already. We can go in 10 minutes."
I said "Sure."
Tehran Demon child is sitting on the sofa. Absorbed in Sponge Bob. I wanted to snarl at him.
Janet begins talking to me about school, and how she really loves the Moxie dolls, and well, honestly, she'd like to have some Bratz dolls, but well, she doesn't have those, but she does have a doll that comes complete with wigs.
She was talking to me, but not in the hyper nonstop talking that some kids are famous for.
I realized looking at her, that she has a difficult life. Dealing with her brother. And I wished in that moment that I had a bratz doll to give her. Instead, I came armed with a bribe for her buck wild brother.
A sticker that featured a cat that said "You are getting better."
I told him, as I used both of my hands to hold onto his arm "If you are not naughty at the bus stop, I have a surprise for you."
He said "What?"
I was thinking "A swift kick in the A, little man." But instead I said "A sticker. With a cat on it."
Producing it with a flourish.
He smiled and said "NO! I want a DOG."
I said "I don't have a dog sticker, I have a cat sticker."
Janet eyeballed the sticker.
Tehran was bad. Kicking and stomping, but I never let go of him for one instant. He threw fits like an animal. He pulled away from my arm like he was a pit bull who was eyeing a pork chop but was chained to a tree, and couldn't reach it.
When that school bus came over the hill, I realized that if the Scissor Sisters had spent a moment or two with Tehran, and then saw the glorious school bus, like a life line slowly moving over the hill, then they would've felt like dancin'.
I sighed as I walked away.
Day Three.
Janet greets me at the door. She says upon opening the door "You know that cat sticker? He didn't want it. So...I kept it."
I nodded as she shrugged and said "Do you like stickers?"
She said "Oh, yes. I do."
And so we start our dreaded walk, yet again.
I am firm with my double handed grip as we are walking "Tehran. it's wednesday. did you know that?"
He said "My school has a dollhouse. I sometimes play with it."
I said "That's good news." thinking...ok..he is behaving himself. Good Good.
We get to the bus stop and he kicks into hyperdrive and starts trying to break free from my grip. The street must have a calling for this child.
He feels propelled to be IN the street. beside it on a sidewalk, that's babystuff, he wants to be right between those lines waving like a maniac at the cars.
So, me and the child who must've been an oppossum in a fomer life, duel it out again, until the glorious bus driver comes to save my day.
I realize more and more that she is a superhero. An unspoken superhero. She not only has to drive a bus load of brats to school in one piece, dealing with fights and ruckuses...but she has to keep one from running out the doors that she must open every so many feet.
I want to bake her a cake.
It makes me want to ask the world, where is this woman's parade?
Where is the National School Bus Drivers day?
Why is there no metal of honor for these people?
That brings us to today...
He decided tree climbing was in his immediate future. Trying to hang on for dear life to a wild child climbing a tree, is no easy feat. He screamed at the top of his lungs two steps up the tree telling me that I was "mean." and that he "didn't like me."
To which I replied very maturely "I never asked you to like me."
the way he looked at me, well, I may as well be from another galaxy.
And again the superhero arrived and said to me "It's a daily battle."
I said "You definitely said it!"
She said "Now, tehran, get in yo' seat."
And I kinda wanted her to lay the smack down on him....
Just one more morning, and then I'm scott free and Georgia bound.
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