Werewolf feelings

Originally posted October 17, 2000

I'm not really a werewolf, but I play one online. And boy, there are times in life I'd SO like to be able to...

I caught a schoolbus back to the settlement today from Jerusalem. It was full of kids and their parents, apparently the settlement had planned some sort of trip and just as I got to the the hitchhiking station, the bus pulled up. It was packed, but I got on and went to the back of the bus and sat on the top step of the rear stairs. The door was covered with a carpet-covered steel plate. How reassuring.

The door was just in front of the very last seat and sitting there were two VERY annoying boys. I'd guess their ages to be 8 and 10. They kicked me, they threw things and when I told them to stop, they said they were aiming for the garbage pail just in front of me. I could see one had his shoelasce untied and I wanted to knot his shoe to the metal rail. But I wanted to do it secretly and he was moving around too much. I asked them to stop countless times. I gave them LOOKS and nothing worked. But hey, the ride was free.

Then one of them asked me if I was a student at the all-girls school on the settlement. I said no, I was Daughter1 and Daughter2's mother. Well...that changed everything. Once we got my bona fides straightened out, they gave me respect. Now they knew I was a Parent and not just some Older Sibling-type. The abuse stopped. Of course this was half an hour into the ride and we only had about 15 more minutes left.

But for that half hour...I so wanted to get into their face and growl just low enough for them to hear and shift my facial features enough so they would KNOW what I was but no one else would see. And for the rest of the trip, they'd sit like good little boys because they were too scared of me to move and they were too embarrassed because they'd wet their pants.

I am a Werewolf, boys and I know ways to make you HOWL.

And then...something happens...that makes being kicked at for 30 minutes seem so damn trivial.

We were 15 minutes away from home when there's this loud bang. The bus had been hit by a stone. We saw the Arabs running for cover, since they never know for sure when someone is armed on a schoolbus and will open fire on them. No one was hurt. And when I looked at the side of the bus, there were too many possible dents already there to figure out exactly which spot was hit.

The kids on the bus for the most part were...incredibly blasZ about it, one of my two tormentors even exclaimed "We've been hit? Yeah! Cool!" Some of the parents said that once we got back to the settlement they should get a group together and head to the road and throw stones at Arab cars.

Of course, last week some settlers did that, an Arab driver was hit, lost control of his car and ran into and killed one of the settlers (that was a Darwin Award winner, btw). At least one settler was arrested and the driver, last I heard was in critcal condition at a hospital because the car struck a barrier and flipped.

Anyway, after getting hit, the glee was taken out of wanting to terrorize a couple of little boys. Dammit.