The Driver on the Bus Says...

I’ve recently come to the realization that I develop selective amnesia each time I set foot in a drugstore. I forget, for example, that we are in dire need of Scotch tape and Band-Aids, and have been for weeks. (YOU try walking into a Very Important Business Meeting with a damn Cookie Monster Band-Aid on your thumb and attempt to be taken seriously. It's not easy, people.) And yet, I remember the brand, color, and name of a drugstore lip gloss that I read about on someone’s blog ages ago, and set out to find it, thereby abandoning any hope of procuring scotch tape and grown-up Band-Aids.

All of this, I guess, should go a long way towards explaining why I thought we had been systematically traumatizing our son over the last few weeks.

Let me explain. His favorite book of late is this version of The Wheels on the Bus:

As you will see from the helpful note on the cover, the book has a great many movable parts. I received it right after Toopweets was born; my friend had gotten it for him, along with a bunch of other books that her own son loved. I remember her saying that I should probably invest in a few or 4 more copies of this book, seeing as her son had already destroyed three, and was working on his fourth. Something about the moving parts being very easy to tear off. I further remember glancing down at my tiny peanut baby, and being completely unable to imagine him ever being capable of such a thing.

Oh, how naïve I was.

He loves this book passionately, and, in “reading” it practically non-stop, has unintentionally ripped the shit out of it. It started off innocently enough, with the people on the bus no longer being able to step OUT! and IN! due to his destruction of the pull tab, but things reached a peak with his BEHEADING OF THE BUS DRIVER. This man’s “Move on back!” days are OVER, people.

As soon as it happened, T became very upset. I assured him I would tape the bus driver’s head right back into place…and promptly realized I HAD NO SCOTCH TAPE.

Not wanting to lose the driver’s head--and rejecting my (very fleeting) thought to use the gum I was chewing at the time as an adhesive--I’ve been sort of, um, wedging the driver’s head in wherever it can fit elsewhere in the book. Over-analyzer that I am, I was worried that my total inability to remember to buy Scotch tape for the damn driver’s head was screwing him up in some way.

I was beginning to think he found it totally normal to see a disembodied, oversized bus driver head jammed in between the doors of a bus, freaking out the man passing by…

Or seeing the driver seemingly licking the ear of one of the mommies on the bus:

But then, after a few days, something funny happened. I noticed him putting the disembodied head back on the right page, and worriedly shouting “Oh, NO!” each time, presumably concerned about the well-being of the headless driver.

Did I say each time? I meant it:

The Headless Bus Driver Disaster from metalia on Vimeo.

At least I haven’t scarred him for life...this time.