This follows up, as I threatened, on the previous item, in which I seemed to take issue, without specifically saying so, with abuse of the concept of non-sanity for no great purpose. This isn’t very good but it isn’t very long either. I observe that in fictional media it’s common to see the “crazy” depicted as wearing straight jackets, babbling incoherently, getting tossed into cushion-covered rooms and then just being abandoned there.
Showing your less preferred presidential candidate wearing one is a step up from a Hitler mustache in political activism. Just about everybody involved with the previous presidential election has been seen that way by somebody. Except, oddly enough, Joe Biden, the one actually known for being difficult to control. However, he is also the only one that I found in Cabbage Patch doll form.
So eh sure, it can be funny, but let’s not pretend this has any basis in reality. It is a very unfortunate stereotype which I suspect we can attribute to the 1930s era cartoons which too many people use as their sole point of research into the mental health field (also, coincidentally, the 1930s were the last time Hitler mustaches were fashionable). We accept that their depictions of ethnic minorities and non-American cultures are often less than accurate but don’t give much thought to the dated, extreme measures used to restrain the slightly less brain-stable.
I’m glad to say that actual mental health institutions are more compassionate. They’re still pretty boring, though. Unless you have something to read or somebody to visit you you’ll just be waiting around all day while the staff test their medication on you. Well I hope they’re enjoying themselves. Unfortunately, sometimes hospitalization is used as punishment rather than treatment, for even many people in the field of special education regard the students as inferior, almost criminal beings who must be medicated and restrained into compliance rather than fellow humans who aren’t there through their own deliberate action. Or maybe that happened just one time.
The American special education system is most recognized for its funny looking transport vehicles. The reduced size buses used to segregate us problem students from the ones people care about are somewhat degrading, but they are a lot safer than the large buses; their turns aren’t nearly as wide and they have seat belts. In fact the primary reason for their design is just to be more maneuverable. Perhaps we ARE special.
Not that any image conscious child will wear a seat-belt unless commanded to… once they find out the small buses have seat belts the other kids are glad to not be burdened with them. Faha! Who’s smart now? (none of us because I didn’t want to wear seat belts either). Not that it’s possible to be image-conscious when you attend an institution of education on a comically abbreviated bus and everybody knows that you do.
School employees insisted these were not buses at all but rather “vans.” This was very helpful in precisely zero ways, because first of all they are obviously not vans and second of all when I actually started going to schools by vans instead of baby buses it was worse. They had yellow signs on their roofs stating “CARRYING SCHOOL CHILDREN” ostensibly to guilt reckless drivers into reconsidering their state of reck, because one generally drives haphazardly out of misdirected selflessness. It also has the benefit of alerting all literate persons that I must be more messed up than usual if I don’t even rate a funny looking bus. Another few years and I’d probably have to go in a Barbie Power Wheels wearing a bright yellow styrofoam helmet that says “I AM SCHOOL CHILD.”
The students I knew in those old days would call a small bus “the tart cart.” Some of these people rode on it with me. An inspiring example of “owning” one’s derogatory abuse words or a bunch of kids too dumb to realize they’re being made fun of? You eat the fudge. That’s “tart” as in “retart*,” incidibally. Well maybe some of us deserved to be there.
This is actually a trolley with monster truck wheels but people assume it’s a badly drawn bus so it works here. This may be the first time it’s worked!
Unfortunately, I wasn’t born smart enough to figure out the secret to succeeding in art.
*you would not ordinarily eat this kind with your fudge
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Get out of my sight!
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Monday: I was going to update this today but everything came up.
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Also, I evidently broke the internet at my home so this is now more difficult than it was.
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my name is finkledy breadcrumb stagecoach mcgandalf
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Friday now?
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A cuppa joe sez:
One of my strongest childhood bus-related memory involves a bus pilot who, at random intervals, would swerve the vehicle back and forth while shouting “WIGGLY-WIGGLY!” In retrospect, this was rather dangerous and irresponsible, but at the time, we thought it was great fun. Incidentally, this same bus was once boarded by a wasp whom everyone referred to as a “bee” (much like the creature in the above image, though I don’t recall this one wearing a beret), which resulted in mass hysteria, including the individual sitting next to me clawing viciously at my arm, presumably in an attempt to burrow inside and take refuge from the invader. A short time later (perhaps a minute or so after its entrance), the wasp then peaceful exited through the open window, having molested no one. Nevertheless, the bussians immediately after began sharing war stories and promising to compose epic poems commemorating the incident, as though they had, though their own guile and resourcefulness, just barely succeeded in surviving some great catastrophe.
Some years later, I had a bus driver who, though lacking a tendency to engage in such daredevil antics, nevertheless succeeded at least one a week in backing into a telephone pole, stop sign, or other such structure. Once, when the busdrivees were behaving in a much merrier and more animated manner than was usual, she warned them to calm down, noting the large rate of accidents we seemed to have, and phrasing this in such a way that they appeared to be unavoidable acts of nature rather than a direct result of her ineptitude in piloting an oversized vehicle. She later disappeared entirely at a period when a change of standard drivers was not normally to be expected, though I never learned whether this was due to her behavior being discovered or not.
But speaking of remember, remember that time someone posted a comment on your (most recent) toilet entry but it was deleted because they weren’t a robot? Those were crazy days.
Zinkugel sez:
I must have had a few wasp-on-bus incidents in my old days. It may be part of the official national core curriculum. Taken with my seat belt observations, children are more afraid of getting poked on the arm than being mangled in a vehicular collision. Some people are fatally allergic, I hear, but these were none of the people that I knew.
One bus driver dropped off every other passenger, assumed he was done, drove to his house and went inside. Rather than go and knock on his door I walked a bit to the location of someone else I sort of knew who lived in the area to drive me to my own dwell-zone. Although I suspect a number of transportation operators were suspended following my stories of their deeds, this would have been the only time it happened for this reason, if it did. I was an easily offended child. In a considerable contrast, when the driver of a city bus I was on last week got out, crossed the street and inhabited a “Gourmet Heaven” store for fifteen minutes, I decided that if another passenger didn’t have the energy to make a formal complaint then fate had ordained it should not happen.
Congress sez:
llmqkgshihwcebtwcrcn, Congress, QPGUnuX.
Zinkugel sez:
That’s what I get for not voting last year.