Bus Tale - All Aboard, Please
This is a test of my memory and my hasty notes (on the back of a shopping list) as much as anything.
Four pre-teens get on the bus - two boys and two girls. Neatly dressed but in slouchy clothes. One boy with a baseball cap turned back-to-front. Wind jackets and jeans (it was a cool day). The two girls and baseball cap (who said little) sit on one side, the other boy on the other.
My ears pricked up when one of them used the word "alternately". Not (in my dealings) teen or pre-teen language - especially amongst themsleves. The boy across seemed the expert on bus routes. He was giving a detailed description of the different buses they could use and how the timing would affect their destination. He was clear to me, though I don't know how much his contemporaries understood.
In the midst of his explanation he told a story on himself. This is where I realized how different kids are from mewhen I was their age. How the times have changed. He was going to some mall and got on the wrong bus in the wrong direction. When he realized this he got off the bus so he would at least not go any further. Then he texted a friend or a cousin to tell of his plight. He asked this person to get a GPS reading so the boy could find out where he was in relation to where he wanted to go. As for me, I wouldn't even think of that today. The boy then told where he found out he was. He was near the neighbourhood where a girl from a previous year in school used to live.
He then asked the other three: "Do you remember 'Pria' (the girl's name)?"
"Pria?" asked one girl.
"Yes. From last year. She took some classes with us."
Girl one looks at girl two. Girl two looks at girl one. There is a silence. Then girl ones speaks.
"Pria was creepy."
Their stop approached and as they rose the boy across said that he had found his pass and his friends wouldn't have to pay his way back.
To me, they obviously remembered Pria. And, for some reason, I don't think the boy across thought she was creepy at all.
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Fascinating Sketch
It was pure delight to read your fascinating and disarmingly descriptive sketch of these pre-teens' "easy" and natural interactions. The distinctive images of the "reversed" cap and combination of "neat" and "slouchy" jeans with windbreakers enabled me to fill in the picture completely with imagined details drawn in part from my own similar observations. It must have crossed your mind that you have the core elements of at least a short story.
Your sentence "my ears pricked up" immediately reminded me of a recent commuter train ride in our metro area. It was a weekend with just a few passengers in the coach. Three teenaged boys in casual garb and back-turned caps boarded. Noticing a lone adolescent girl sitting at the far end, they sat down opposite her. Their brief introductions established they were total strangers to the girl. What followed certainly "pricked up" my ears as well.
After a few "passing-time-of-day" remarks, the boys rapidly "transitioned" into sharing sexually explicit experiences, replete with graphic descriptions of their comparative "sizes" and F-words in elevated and animated voice levels, clearly brazen overtures to "draw out" responses from the initially reticent girl.
I said to myself, "Surely she is going to tell these obnoxious characters to "buzz off," but instead she gradually opened up to them and revealed herself to be more than "game" for whatever they had in mind, and it became increasingly apparent they had quite a bit in mind. In the small town of my youth, one would have likely been socially outcast if not placed in juvenile detention for such behavior in a PUBLIC place. I listened to their conversation (I hope it was limited to just talk) in utter amazement and disbelief! "Is this what suburbia has come to?" was the persistent question running through my mind like an endless loop tape playing.
Their unusually frank conversation continued for some twenty-five minutes until we all exited at the final downtown station. As they walked off, it seemed apparent that at least one of the guys was hooking up with the girl for an urban escapade.
For an old widower like me from a totally different and far-removed generation and upbringing in the 1940's and 50's, the whole experience constituted an amazing revelatory insight into our modern age. While no prude, I nevertheless came away with an almost altered consciousness and feeling a bit like a memorable Miss Brill whose Sunday outing left her, shall we say, "unsettled" after she voyeuristically observed the behavior of a romantic young couple in one of Katherine Mansfield's classic short stories.
Brenden - thank you for your
Brenden - thank you for your comments. I seem to no longer get notification of comments, and just now saw this while browsing.
Oddly, part of my interest in "my" quartet was their lack of sexual talk. Nary a "fuck" amongst them. And the comment that the mentioned girl was "creepy" was more insightful than the usual "bitch" or whatever. But perhaps this group was still a couple of years younger than current teen-age chatter.
I'm guessing the males on your train knew how far to approach the girl verbally, and proceeded upon her reactions (or lack of them). Their social milieu.
I - as you - note the great difference from my teens to theirs.