No Child Left… Somewhere
Middle school in Florida was the worst two and a half years of my life, due to bullying that went largely unaddressed. The worst thing that happened to me in middle school didn’t involve bullying, but gross negligence on the part of the faculty.
I am autistic and rode on the special needs bus throughout middle school. Because my mother was still at work by the time school let out, the bus driver would drop me off at my best friend’s house, since his mother would be home to receive and look after us. It was a good arrangement that worked for all parties involved, until the one day when a member of the faculty screwed the pooch.
On that day, I was shepherded onto a bus for children who were not in special education by one of the teachers. I knew it wasn’t my bus. I tried to explain it to the driver and the teacher, but the teacher wasn’t listening, and before I knew it, the bus was departing from the school. Between this mix-up and anxiety from the crap I had to deal with during the regular school day, I completely lost it and had a full-blown panic attack, crying and desperately pleading to go on my proper bus.
The bus driver, for their part, was confused about what was going on. They radioed back to the school to figure out what was wrong with the kid who kept crying that this wasn’t his bus, but the faculty member who answered basically told them to disregard me, saying that I “cried about everything”.
Eventually, the bus driver dropped me off at the apartment complex where I lived. The problem now was that I couldn’t get into my home since I had no key, and there was no one home, so all I could do was sob in the parking lot.
Enter Supermom.
When my best friend was dropped off at his house, his mother was understandably confused as to why I wasn’t there. He told her what had happened, and she subsequently contacted my mother.
She made a beeline for home and made sure I was okay, then called the school to ask them what the f*** happened. When she learned that the faculty member the bus driver talked to said to disregard me on the grounds of my being a crybaby, she was P***ED. She was already displeased with the faculty’s seeming inability to address my bullying problem, but told them in no uncertain terms that if they didn’t get their s*** straightened out, especially in regards to making sure I was on the right bus going forward, she would form a one-woman picket line at the bus loop and invite the local news affiliate over so the whole county could watch her raise Hell.
I never had a mix-up with my bus ever again after that, and the bullying issue would soon be resolved when we moved to another state. It took me many years to deal with the trauma from attending that middle school, but I can safely say that leaving that middle school has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
