Gary the Giant

One of the best and worst things about my childhood growing up in the country was our very long lane. I can't even begin to count how many times I had to run to the end of that lane to catch the schoolbus, the bus that I could see coming up over the hill three driveways down, giving me just enough time to get from my front door to the big yellow bus door. Sometimes I still have nightmares that I've missed the bus. In my nightmares, I'm a full-grown adult, standing at the storm door in the front room of my childhood home, and I don't have my schoolbooks together, or I don't have any clothes on, or I don't have my wild, rat's nest hair brushed. So I stand there helplessly, and I miss the bus, even though I can see it coming from three driveways down.

Most of the time, in my nightmare, I miss the bus because I didn't have my hair brushed.

As a child, having my hair brushed was a very, very big deal. An ordeal, really. When I was very young, my mom would rake my long, stubbornly curly hair into two sections and place them as pigtails on either side of the top of my head. I have pictures of this, and it was the only time that my hair looked even remotely cute. Mostly, it was an unruly mess. Yes, a "rat's nest," as my mom would call it. Eventually, when I got to second grade, she cut it so short that everyone thought I was a boy, including the cute eighth grade boys that I had crushes on. But when I was in kindergarten, curly little pigtails it was.

On one occasion, when I was in kindergarten, I tromped up that long driveway to the road and got on that big bus full of kids who were all older than I, and I made my way to my seat. As I sat in that huge bus, on that huge bus seat, with those huge kids, I felt something.

A yank.

And then a bigger yank.

And then pain. Hot, searing pain on my head.

I turned in my seat to look up at Gary. He had to have been one of the largest, cutest eighth graders on the whole bus. Maybe in the whole school district. Maybe even in the whole world. And something had prompted Gary, this absolutely gigantic eighth grade boy, to use one of my pigtails as a stress-reliever or source of entertainment or something.

I didn't say anything. I didn't even cry. I just sat there, perfectly still, facing the front of the bus and let him pull my pigtails.

Every day.

I think I was so intimidated by or in love with Gary the Giant that I didn't even tell my parents that my hair was being yanked on. Hard. Every day. If my mom had yanked on my hair every day (and she did) I would have screamed bloody murder (and I did). But no one ever heard me complain about Gary the Giant yanking on my pigtails.

But one evening as my mom was taking the pigtails out, she noticed that my head was red and swollen, which, believe it or not, was not a normal thing, even with all of the brushing and yanking she did to my rat's nest on a regular basis. I don't remember how, but she finally got it out of me that this big kid, Gary the Giant, had been pulling my hair. She knew Gary the Giant. She knew Gary the Giant's mother. I expected her to go right to the phone and call Mrs. Giant, but she didn't. She didn't say much, as I recall. She just kept brushing my hair.

I rode home on the bus, as I did every day, and Gary pulled my pigtails, as he did every day, and the busdriver, Gib (who was my busdriver from the time I was five until I graduated from high school) made a left turn onto Lovebury Road, as he did every day. It was all very predictable. Very normal. The bus even groaned to a stop in front of Gary the Giant's house and Gib even creaked open the schoolbus door in front of Gary the Giant's driveway, just like he did every single day of my kindergarten life.

But what was very NOT normal--what did NOT happen every single day--was that my mother--yes, MY MOTHER--was standing there, at the end of Gary's driveway, waiting, her arms crossed over her ample bosum. Wow, I thought, I wonder why my mom's picking me up here? There was always some wacky thing going on in our house, so I figured it was just another wacky thing. But it turned out that my mom wasn't there just to get me. She was there to get vengeance.

She got on that bus, and Gib didn't even stop her. She walked down the aisle, fists at her side, and walked straight up to Gary the Giant's seat. She pulled Gary the Giant out of his seat while every other kid on that bus sat there, mouths agape. She grabbed two fistfulls of Gary the Giant's thick black hair in each of her hands. And she yanked. Hard. And then she yanked again. And again. Until Gary the Giant was crying. Crying!

And then she stuck her finger in Gary the Giant's tear-streaked face and spat between gritted teeth, "If you every touch my daughter again, I'll take every one of your fingers off with my teeth and you'll get off this bus with two handfuls of stubs instead of fistfuls of my daughter's hair." And then she took my hand, pulled me off that bus, and walked me home. And Gib didn't even stop us.

Gary stopped pulling my pigtails after that.