"It Takes All Kinds - The Johnathan X Story"

It Takes All Kinds - The Johnathan X Story
by John S LES


Man oh man, times do change.  I have to follow up my Geraldine story with a story about a kid I grew up with that I shall call Johnathan X.  But first I must acknowledge my friends who have read this blog and went to the same middle school as I did.  After posting the Geraldine Story a couple of friends of mine and I laughed about it on Facebook as we remembered the school, the teachers, the bus ride to get to school and other friends who went to the middle school with us.  Looking back it seems a little difficult to believe it all happened, but being able to recall a time in our lives over 30 years ago was very, very cathartic   Thanks Phil!!

Once again, I grew up on the Lower Eastside of big New York City.  I remember one of the older kids in the elementary school, a kid named Johnathan X, always had an anger management issue.  I was friendly with his younger siblings, a brother and two sisters.  We all played during lunch period in school and after school on the neighborhood playground.  All of us...except for Johnathan X.  Johnathan was always an angry and explosive personality type kid who didn't know how to socialize too much out of a restricted "Hello" and "Goodbye" pattern.

The teachers in school worked with Johnathan X.  He was an intelligent kid, he always seemed to get great grades and was kept in the advanced learning classes throughout our elementary school.  In addition, although I played with his younger brother and sisters, I could never recall seeing his parents at events at school for families and teachers.  I also remember his parents being very strict about curfew hours.  You always saw the kid running home, even if we were in the middle of a playground game, if it had reached a certain time for them to be home.  Stickball game, bottom of the 9th, tie game?  Oops, its 5:32 and Johnathan's parents wanted his brother and sisters home by 5:30 - peww they were gone!

Johnathan was a loner.  He didn't really walk to school with anyone.  Some kids made fun of him, with that stern look he had on his face all the time.  The older bullies in the neighborhood used to make fun of him, but they had to stop because it would always turn out to a fight to the death if they got into it with him.  He would plot revengeful sneak attacks against them all week long, that it just wasn't worth it to the bullies.  So between that and parents and neighborhood elders chastising these bullies, Johnathan pretty much was left alone after a while.  I think he eventually did attend some special school for additional socializing skills, but I'm not 100 percent certain.  All I do know is that when you stopped over to see him with his siblings at the playground, he was pretty much a mute standing or sitting in the background.  He never played.  He wouldn't even look at you.

I once told his brother that he better buy Johnathan a bell or a whistle in case there was a fire in their house, because this "mute" thing wasn't working as we were entering our early teens and Johnathan was in his mid-teens.  Several years pass and as we were now into our mid-teens his brother started getting involved with some very negative elements, in this case, drug dealers.  I had to stop hanging out with his brother.  Especially after one summer night when their father came running out of their building, ran to the vicinity of the neighborhood playground and basketball courts with a handgun and fired a gunshot at his son.  The bullet struck a pole about 60 feet away from me.  That one gunshot turned the whole neighborhood into Olympic hurdlers and sprinters as we ran out of the way.  The police came.  It was a whole mess.  Afterwards people in the neighborhood were laughing about how fast everyone started running to safety when the gunshot sounded, or lost lost a shoe running.  "Hey grandma, I didn't know that you could run that fast in those bloomers.  You actually beat me into the building."

That was the last full summer I had in New York City.  For the remainder of my time living there, I was always in and out of the city in the summer.  I got a scholarship to go away to a private school and subsequently attended a private college.  I worked most of the summers in between my school years and socialized with people outside of my old neighborhood.

Now today in America, I wonder how differently Johnathan would have been treated?  Probably a lot different.  I'm sure the Board of Education would probably send a special teacher to sit with Johnathan and give him special teaching and try to get him to learn to socialize more with other kids.  I'm also sure that he would have been marked as another "Trench Coat Mafia" type, who might come in school one day angry at one of the bullies and then attack the whole school.  Who knows?  But, the way it was handled back then was to pretty much just offer Johnathan the opportunity to learn and then leave him alone.

But here is the grand finale to this story that you've been waiting for.  Several years after college, I found myself working in New York City, in midtown, but living in New Jersey.  I commuted by bus and then PATH trains.  Now for those of you who ride New York City bus transit system, you all know we have a bus called the "express" bus?  I'm sure all big city transit systems have the same "express".  That's the bus that skips stops and drives a little faster than normal because it is skipping stops.  Normally I would take that express downtown and then catch a crosstown bus to catch the PATH train back to New Jersey.  Yes it was a crazy commute, but I enjoyed it for a while.

In addition, those of you who rode the NYC buses in the '70's, '80's and early '90's know that people would crowd the front part of the bus and refuse to move to the rear of the bus.  They liked to crowd the front area of the bus so that they can exit the automatic front door, plus it was roomier than the cramped rear door exit (today's NYC buses are a lot roomier with easier-to-exit rear doors).  In addition, this bunching of people near the front of the bus prevented additional people from boarding the bus and filling it to capacity.  Being an experienced bus rider, I knew that when the bus drivers got angry, they could step on the accelerator a little bit and that would (by sheer laws of physics) "move the crowd back" further into the bus and allow additional people to board the bus at the next stop.  It's an old trick that was used only when necessary by cynical bus operators.

So after a long day at my job, it's a cold day, rush hour and I already let two legitimately over crowded buses go by me.  But now I was getting pressed to board any downtown bus so that I wouldn't miss the crosstown connection and catch my PATH train into New Jersey.  I see the next express bus pull in, and I can see that although there's plenty of room in the back, the front is packed with people.  So now I'm pressed for time, I board the bus, pull my token out and look the bus driver dead in the eye to say my usual "Hello".  Much to my SHOCK and AWE the driver of this bus is non other than JOHNATHAN X!!!  He looked me dead in the eyes, but didn't quite acknowledge that he recognized my face.  But I clearly recognized the scowl on his face as he growled at the passengers "Move to the back!  Move to the back!"

With that I knew what was coming next.  So rather than waste anytime for a 2 second reunion conversation, I immediately lifted up my briefcase and used it as a battering ram to make my way to the back, where there was actually two empty seats.  I then held onto the seat pole for dear life.  Ironically, I received some angry, disgruntled and indignant faces from my fellow, standing passengers for the Mel Gibson, action movie like dive I made to get into that seat.  "All of that for a seat?" was their faces, but NOT FOR LONG.

As expected, out of Johnathan's anger and frustration that the crowd in the front was not following his directive to move to the back, he floored the accelerator causing at least 15 of the people to literally go flying backwards as they lost their grip on the standing poles.  They were stumbling, air swimming and falling backwards...towards the rear.  He hard swerved right and left to keep them moving and then came to a quick halt when he reached the next express stop.  A couple of women on the bus started complaining about his rough driving. All he did was yell in response, "Move to the back!" and then floored the bus to the next stop.  My arms were double wrapped around the pole next to my seat.  I actually managed to reach out and catch another man who was trying to run to the rear like I did and grab the last open seat.  It was truly the bus ride from hell.  People were getting off yelling, some were claiming that they were going to report him as soon as they got off.

Thankfully, I only had about 6 or 7 total stops on this express bus.  Johnathan got me to my crosstown stop  to catch the PATH train in record time.  I was so happy to get off that bad roller coaster ride.  Never before or since had I actually been as afraid that I was going to either die or end up in a hospital behind a NYC bus ride as I was that day.  But Johnathan X did manage to do just that this particular evening.

I never did see him on that route again.  I always wondered if those people did complain and perhaps he was indeed suspended or lost his job.  Even more importantly, I kept asking myself is...how did he pass a psychological test to deal with a job like driving a bus in NYC?  How did he get past showing some hostility to people who annoyed him as well as the general public?  In any event, I moved on from New Jersey, and moved into Queens, before finally landing on Long Island.  But I never, ever will forget the wild and crazy bus ride I had at the hands of Johnathan X.  I guess it truly does take all kinds in this life.