As a country kid I spent two hours a day on that big yellow instrument of torture some people call a school bus.

Often through my government school career I was one of the first if not the first to have to board that diesel-snorting, cold, hot, stinking, dangerous because it was often driven too fast on narrow roads, redneck-bully-filled monstrosity. So I usually avoid thinking about my term of imprisonment there.

But tonight, while thinking about how alienated the average u2018patriot' really is from mainstream society, it occurred to me that I learned a few things on the government school bus that I never imagined might still apply in the adult world. I was so wrong. Here's what I learned:

Acting as if you know anything at all is the quickest way to get branded a u2018know it all.'

Acting as if you care about anything that really matters is the quickest way to get ignored.

Trying to tell others about what really matters, or telling anything that varies from the accepted stories, is the quickest way to get hated or feared or beat up.

Ignoring bullies is not possible. If they can't irritate or abuse you one way they'll find another.

Most people will sit idly by and let the bullies beat the stuff out of you.

When you decide to fight back you must always take the high ground, whether verbal or physical, and make damn sure of it, or the bullies will take advantage of your poor position.

Taking the u2018moral high ground' is not a sure means to success. It only angers some bullies and makes them more determined to destroy you or cause you misery.

Habitual liars will not be swayed to the straight path by your good example or by pleading. They were probably taught to lie at home and it is part of their value system.

You have to choose sides. Doing something because it's u2018the right thing to do' is beyond the understanding of most adults or children, regardless of how many times they've been taught otherwise. They will ultimately always choose what benefits their own survival.

Not being part of one team or the other is the quickest way to get ignored. After all, if you don't fit in somewhere, you probably don't deserve to fit in anywhere.

Most of the riders on the bus of life will expect you to live down to their standards, if indeed they have any standards. Of course they all think they have high standards. But that doesn't make it true.

Now here's the secret to this. Most of the kids who were bullies as kids grow out of it one way or another.

It's often the wimpy smart kids, or sometimes the kids who never really knew failure so they can't understand why others aren't like them, who grow up to be bullies in the adult world. They end up writing the laws or promoting or enforcing them, attempting to tell everyone else how to live and what to do in the pursuit of regulating every aspect of our lives.

Maybe my years of being forced to attend the government school taught me something after all.

May 24, 2005