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Here’s my tale of riding the bus.

It was 1976 Alabama...and the bus was complete chaos. I was 6 years old, riding 4 to a seat and kids standing in the aisles, with kids of all ages - to include high school.

Some of the high school students would smoke...and I still remember the refrain “Mr. Nichols is coming”, which meant it was time to put out the cigs.

My brother and I were scrawny white kids, who got off at the very last stop (you see, the miracle of forced busing caused me to go to school a long, long way from home - instead of the neighborhood school that was close by). Our status of getting off last meant that nobody wanted to let us sit with them.

So, we would go through a daily ritual - we would ask to sit down...none of the illiterate high school kids would let us...and Mr. Nichols would make them let us sit down. After around a week, these feral students retaliated...and my brother and I got to ride the entire trip with knives to our throats. Just a pack of black teens holding knives to some scrawny 6 y/o whitey kids’ necks, as the bus rolled down the road.

My brother has always been very industrious, and he found a work around. We couldn’t afford school lunches, so we brought a packed lunch in a lunch box. We each would save one item from our lunch, and use it to bribe a black girl to let us sit with her. So, we changed from getting our throats nearly slit to a daily shakedown. Looking back on it, she was probably desperately poor, and probably didn’t eat at home.

Then the route changed. They decided to drive all the way to the end of the route (my stop), and let us out...and then work back towards the school, letting people off. I switched from last stop to first stop. The result: You ever see a pack of wild dogs on tv, fighting over a dead animal and tearing it apart? My brother and I were the dead animal. We’d step on the bus and get yanked into a seat...these guys would literally punch each other as they fought over us.

Anyway, I can very much relate to your story about getting stabbed. The bus was a lot like stepping into a cage with the animals at the zoo. You’re trapped in there, and in a lot of ways its the law of the jungle.