Between the ages of 11-13 my parents made me go to Talmud Torah, an after-school Hebrew/religious school. I hated it passionately, and used to deliberately miss the bus that took me there so my dad would have to come pick me up. That way I could beg him to let me come home instead. It was pretty sad.
I have only sketchy memories of what we learned in those classes. The only Hebrew I remember is how to say "The bell rang." and "I need to go to the bathroom." I also have vague memories of repeatedly trying to feed and hydrate dying flies that lived in a window sill in one of my classrooms.
Out of the whole Talmud Torah experience, the only thing I ever liked was one of the bus drivers. Since there were only a small amount of kids that went to TT that lived near me, we often had a short bus driven by a guy named Dan. Dan was, hairy, short and entirely inappropriate.
He would kick parts of the bus and dent them to show me that his boots were steel toed. When we were doing something he didn't like he would say slyly, "That's one." We would ask "what do you mean? what are you going to do" and he would just look at us in the mirror and smile. When we would continue being irritating he would say "That's two." We would laugh and laugh with fear and amusement at the thought of what he would eventually do if we made him really mad or got to whatever number was the number that would cause him to flip his shit. The counting never actually amounted to anything other than entertainment.
We often had an hour in between when I got picked up and when we had to pick up the next kid, so a few times when I was the only kid on the bus he would be like "Let's do something fun." and he drove the school bus weird places like through the Wendy's drive through and ordered a diet coke. I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. Once he pulled the entire bus right into my parent's driveway and came in and we all ate spaghetti.
He also told me dirty jokes. One of them was "Have you ever been caught masturbating in the closet?" and then when I would say "no" he said "It's a good place to hide, isn't it?" That one was on the tame side. I would always beg him to tell me more jokes. I never told my parents about this because I had deep affection for Dan and didn't want him to get fired.
He eventually did get fired when he was taking a kid out on one of his "Let's do something fun." bus trips to get ice cream and the principal of the school saw him.
Anyway, he was cool and I am glad that I knew him.
I have only sketchy memories of what we learned in those classes. The only Hebrew I remember is how to say "The bell rang." and "I need to go to the bathroom." I also have vague memories of repeatedly trying to feed and hydrate dying flies that lived in a window sill in one of my classrooms.
Out of the whole Talmud Torah experience, the only thing I ever liked was one of the bus drivers. Since there were only a small amount of kids that went to TT that lived near me, we often had a short bus driven by a guy named Dan. Dan was, hairy, short and entirely inappropriate.
He would kick parts of the bus and dent them to show me that his boots were steel toed. When we were doing something he didn't like he would say slyly, "That's one." We would ask "what do you mean? what are you going to do" and he would just look at us in the mirror and smile. When we would continue being irritating he would say "That's two." We would laugh and laugh with fear and amusement at the thought of what he would eventually do if we made him really mad or got to whatever number was the number that would cause him to flip his shit. The counting never actually amounted to anything other than entertainment.
We often had an hour in between when I got picked up and when we had to pick up the next kid, so a few times when I was the only kid on the bus he would be like "Let's do something fun." and he drove the school bus weird places like through the Wendy's drive through and ordered a diet coke. I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. Once he pulled the entire bus right into my parent's driveway and came in and we all ate spaghetti.
He also told me dirty jokes. One of them was "Have you ever been caught masturbating in the closet?" and then when I would say "no" he said "It's a good place to hide, isn't it?" That one was on the tame side. I would always beg him to tell me more jokes. I never told my parents about this because I had deep affection for Dan and didn't want him to get fired.
He eventually did get fired when he was taking a kid out on one of his "Let's do something fun." bus trips to get ice cream and the principal of the school saw him.
Anyway, he was cool and I am glad that I knew him.
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