Jody Rivelli--Elementary School Girl or Terrorist? You decide.

When I was in grade school, a brother and sister shared my bus stop--Jody and Joey Rivelli. Fail names for sure. I chalked it up to the fact that they lived in an apartment building, and were therefore from what I considered as "the other side of the tracks." Don't ask me why I had this notion as it clearly makes no sense. I myself have lived in multiple apartment buildings and never felt the need to have teardrops tattooed on my face or install bars on the windows. It was just a weird childhood misconception...most likely based solely on my experience with the Rivelli children.

The fact that Jody and her brother behaved as though they were in some kind of pre-peubescent motorcycle gang was, I am sure, purely coincidental. I just know that they frightened me. Jody especially set me on edge, as she possessed what I considered to be a "criminal temperament". It was all in the eyes. The looked all sharp and crimey. I imagined that she spent her free time repeatedly throwing a baseball against the side of her brick apartment building and making angsty facial expressions.

While to passersby she may have appeared to be an innocent 8 year old girl, I know the truth, as she proceeded to terrorize me in several ways. I shall outline them for you now so that the wool can be pulled away from your eyes and you can start viewing all children as they should be viewed--with guarded suspicion.

Riding the school bus was bad enough as it was.  The only saving grace for the first two years of school was that my upstairs neighbor Takara Palinski rode with me and therefore I was not a friendless loser (sometimes a puked-upon loser, but never friendless).  The real trouble started when I was in third grade and Takara was in fourth, therefore placing her in the middle school and leaving me to fend for myself. If we have met, you know that I should never, under any circumstances, be left alone to fend for myself.  I do not possess the social coping mechanisms necessary to survive without at least one sidekick, and my lack of sidekicks leaves me open to attack from hostile third party apartment dwelling gang bangers.

A few days after school started, I was getting on the bus at the end of the day to go home and Jody walked up to me in the aisle and punched me in the face. Twice. Now, I don't know if this is common and you are all reading saying "So what? I've been punched in the face eight times just this week alone!" but to me it was definitely outside of the realm of situations for which I had a predetermined response.  This left me with no choice but to go to my default reaction.  I cried.

The remainder of my ride home was spent curled up in the bench seat simmering in a stew of fear, shame, and self-loathing.  By  the time we came to my stop, I had worked out a plan to surgically alter my appearance and move to a suburb better than our own, a suburb with no apartment buildings. 

My mother went sideways when I told her about, as she called it, the "battery" I was subjected to.  Within ten minutes she had spoken to the principal and arranged for the maximum punishment allowed by law--a stern talking-to.  The next morning, at school, Jody delivered the mandatory apology, dropped her head to her chest in the mandatory and universal expression of false contrition, and plotted her revenge.

Call me paranoid, but I firmly believe that when she vomited on the floor in fourth period English later that day, the gesture was intended for me.  It was the perfect retribution as it not only traumatized me, as it was accompanied by much theatrical retching and great splashing noises, but once again my reaction brought shame upon myself, and shame is not a good color on me.  I like to think I calmly filed out of the room behind all the other students, but the reality of the situation was probably closer to this:

Just picture that same facial expression on an 8 year old girl with two black eyes.

Thus continued my long and storied history of public humiliation.

Childhood Me=Constant Overreactions to the Bodily Functions of Others

PART I: The Scary Bus Ride

Growing up, my parents lived on the first floor apartment of a double-decker. The second floor was occupied by a family with a daughter my age--Takara Palinski.

Takara was a year ahead of me in school, so we rode the bus together back and forth. One morning when I was in kindergarten, I ran upstairs to get Takara so we could go to the bus stop. Her mom was pushing her out the door, and Takara was saying something that I remember roughly as

"There is a pain in my abdomen akin to that of a small calf trying to be born through my belly-button! I see a white light! I should probably stay home."

Her mother's reaction indicated that the idea of spending the day with her 7 year-old daughter was new, unpleasant, and definitely out of the question. Her response, as I recall, went something like

"I don't care if you die a slow and painful death, ebola slowly liquifying your internal organs as you wait for the school bus. LEAVE ME NOW."


She held out until after we boarded the bus; we chose the very front seat. As the bus ride continued, my sense of foreboding grew to Biblical proportions. By the time we were halfway to school, the bus was so packed that we had to squeeze over to make room for Mike Wackell, who would forever be bonded with us from that day forward.

Why do little kids always state the obvious? When Takara said "I'm throwing up now", it was probably the most unnecessary statement in history. Her jacket and mine were already covered, and Mike was bracing himself for the coming onslaught of semi-digested....well....whatever Polish people eat for breakfast. Maybe some kind of pierogi. Breakfast pierogi. The worst pierogi of them all.

At this point you may be asking yourself "Why so much detail, Cuppycake?" I'll answer your question with a question of my own: Why am I the only one who must have this burned into my brain forever? Do I really need to carry this burden alone for another 20 years?

Needless to say, the rest of the us ride was torture. I was calling out to the bus driver every, oh, I don't know, FIFTEEN SECONDS "Bus driver! Help me! Takara threw up!" As an adult, I know that the bus driver was probably in a personal hell of her own at the moment and could not hear me at the time, as she was busy reflecting on a series of poor judgment calls that landed her at that moment and location.

It appears that the driver learned her lesson, though. By the time I boarded the bus after school, I had spent so many hours reflecting on the events of the morning that I was literally green and had little wide-eyed floating heads all around me shaking their heads slowly as if to say "Stay away from this one....Bad things will be happening here soon." She skipped all the other stops and went directly to my house, where I promptly exited the bus, walked three steps down the road, and threw up right on the yellow line. No pierogies, though.