The Bus Ride
“You look like you’re running away from home,” said the old man sitting next to Tim on the bus.
“Sort of,” Tim replied absently.
“Me too,” said the old man. “I’m going to a retirement home to die.” Tim didn’t respond. “So are you going all the way to Toronto?” the old man continued.
“Yes,” Tim answered.
“”Dodging the draft?” the old man asked, eyebrows raised.
“I don’t know yet. At this point, I’m just meeting someone up there. He says he can help me find a place to live and a part-time job, and maybe help me find a school to go to.”
“Why not get a student deferment and go to school here?”
“I’m flunking out here. I just got my grades for last semester, and I’m now on academic probation. One more bad semester and I’ll be carrying a pack in Vietnam for sure.”
“Why are you flunking out?”
“I’m majoring in chemical engineering, and the school I’m going to is trying to prove how good their engineering programs are by flunking most of us out our freshman year. Two thirds of us failed second semester chemistry, half failed second semester calculus, and one third failed physics.”
“So you’re not up to the challenge?”
“I don’t like trying to learn in such a hostile environment. It’s like the instructors are just looking for reasons to take points away from us. Actually teaching us anything seems to be the last thing on their minds.”
“What do your parents think?”
“My dad is upset, as usual. He thinks I can’t do anything right.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a marketing director, and I should mention he played football for the same school I’m flunking out of, started at tight end for two years.”
“Did you play football?”
“For a while in high school, but I quit my junior year.”
“Why?”
“I wasn’t getting anywhere. I wasn’t going to letter, and I didn’t like football anyway.”
“Why?”
“It just seemed so stupid. Ramming my head into someone seemed so unnatural. It was like my brain was saying, what are you doing, your skull is not a battering ram. Hitting someone with my fist seemed natural enough, but using my head just didn’t seem right.”
“Did you explain that to your father?”
“No, he would have just seen that as confirmation that I’m a pansy or something. I did tell him I wanted to run on the cross-country team though, then maybe run the mile on the track team in the spring. But he seemed too disappointed about me quitting football to hear anything else that I was saying, so I just let the running slide.”
“Will you continue with chemical engineering if you go to school in Toronto?”
“I don’t know. I was always more interested in doing research, possibly in biochemistry. I don’t know about working on the manufacturing side of things, and I definitely don’t want a corporate career like my dad.”
“Did you tell your dad you were looking into Canada?”
“No, he could never go along with something like that. He thinks the best thing I can do right now is join the National Guard. He thinks the experience would help me mature, and if he can manage to get me into the right unit, which he’s trying to do, then I wouldn’t have to face going to Vietnam. But I don’t want any part of that. I just want to get out from under the whole damned thing.”
“And you think Canada is the answer?”
“Yes, I do. I actually do. So what do you think?”
“Well, I can tell you as an old man that every time my gut told me to do something, really told me to do something, it was never wrong.”
