School Bus Education Series: Part 3 by Josh

Since my 3 siblings have all written blogs about our childhood, I figured I’d guest blog, too. I be Josh, the involuntarily labeled yet self-actualized black sheep of the Boyd offspring. Second oldest but last in charge. My 4th grade teacher Mrs. Carlson once asked me, “Why can’t you be like your brother James?” This single question started my path down the wide road that leadeth to destruction according to the Good Book. Thanks for that, Mrs. Carlson. This single question also sparked my lifelong disdain for the Red Sox (Mrs. Carlson was a fan). However, I digress.

As my sisters alluded to in earlier blogs, we all endured our fair share of trials and tribulations on the bus. Twice a day, one or more of us interacted with kids of the sordid type: girls that wore fake nails, makeup and short skirts and guys who listened to Rock-n-Roll and Roll, cursed at every opportunity, gambled with their lunch money and looked at their dads’ porn. Needless to say, I knew all of these abominations were strictly forbidden inside the hallowed walls of the Boyd Compound of Fundamental Christianity. When I first set foot on the bus I felt like Pinocchio must have felt when he arrived on Pleasure Island (but before he started turning into a donkey). I had access to all of the forbidden fruit and I could eat—as long as James didn’t find out. The bus was a mobile Sodom and Gomorrah, a Pleasure Island on wheels, and I sampled almost all of the fruit the Island had to offer.

Of all the forbidden fruits I tasted on the bus, the most delicious by far was Rock-n-Roll. Not just any sort of Rock-n-Roll, mind you, Heavy Metal Rock-n-Roll. Unfortunately, I had to keep my newfound snack a secret. Notwithstanding Phil and Syl’s deafness, their fundamentalist Baptist leanings made them hyper-aware of sins of an auditory origin. These auditory sins were things that their hearing church brethren informed them were sinful. Chief among these sins was Rock-n-Roll. In Phil and Syl’s minds, all music fell into one of two categories: Rock-n-Roll and Christian. If music was deemed to be Rock-n-Roll, it was forbidden on the Compound.

Phil and Syl devised a three-prong test to determine which category the proposed music fell into: (1.) Do we sing it in church?; (2.) Is it sold it in the church bookstore?; and (3.) Does James approve? If the answer to any of these questions was “no,” it was Rock-n-Roll and tantamount to Satan worship, according to Phil and Syl. Period. Sadly, this three-prong test weeded out all of what I considered to be enjoyable music. Anything with electric instruments or drums (the core of Rock-n-Roll according to Phil) was quickly disapproved and labeled as ungodly. This was true even if the artist was a self-proclaimed Christian musician. What made matters worse was the fact that we didn’t have a lot of money so I wasn’t able to purchase my own heavy metal cassette tapes. Even if I could, I wouldn’t dare try to smuggle home a cassette. Where would I hide it? What would happen if Phil and Syl found it? Or James the narc for that matter… too risky. Eventually I enlisted the help of my friend Tim.

Tim and I were in the same grade and lived only blocks apart. We rode the same bus and sat together most of the time. Tim, though labeled by most adults as a “bad apple,” was an awesome friend because he came with a walkman. Walkmans were also forbidden in on the Compound as they provided access to… wait for it…. Rock-n-Roll radio stations (insert collective gasp here). At some point I discovered a small, easily concealed and inexpensive piece of technology called a “double jack.” The double jack enabled the walkman headphone port to support two (2) sets of headphones. Armed with this discovery and several weeks’ allowance (I received a small wage for my slave labor at the Compound), I purchased a double jack and a pair of ear buds for my listening pleasure. Being the good friend that he was, Tim agreed to allow me to plug in my double jack as long as I sat next to the window and supplied an occasional battery. I remember listening to Tim’s heavy metal mixed tape for the first time with my new ear buds. I had never heard such melodious sounds. The drums, guitars and screaming vocals were almost too much. It was like a drug and I wanted more. Tim exposed me to bands like Motley Crüe, Poison, Skid Row, Iron Maiden, Metallica and my personal favorite, Guns and Roses. In 7th grade, I bought my own walkman. Because the walkman led to auditory sin, I had to endure an intense Spanish Inquisition-esque screening process before Phil and Syl eventually approved the purchase.

From then on, whenever I wanted to add music to my growing collection of contraband, all I had to do was take one of James’s Christian cassette tapes, put a little piece of tape over one of the holes and copy over it with the Heavy Metal artist of my choice.

I guess if there’s a moral to this story, it’s that… umm… well there’s no moral. Drive your kids to school. The bus is a cradle of filth and a den of iniquity that I will never let my kids ride. The End.

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