The Fat One and The Bus

by tess

Jason is a typical child, really cute but typical. At 2 ½, he has not yet developed the filter which modifies the thought in his brain prior to speaking it aloud.

He was riding his little truck around the office on Monday when Kirstie walked past. Unfiltered Jason asked his Daddy, “What’s the fat one’s name?” Mortified and feigning acute deafness, his father ignored Jason. Sadly that evening’s conversation about why it’s rude to call people fat didn’t quite melt into little Jason’s brain. Nor did Kirstie’s name.

On Tuesday when Kirstie wended her way toward the kitchen, Jason asked his Daddy, “Where’s the fat one going?”

It’s Wednesday evening and Jason’s been here all day. Kirstie hasn’t left her desk since 8:15; I think she’s peeing in her coffee cup rather than facing that child again.


I know that every parent has a similar horror story. My mother’s favorite is The Bus. I grew up in Baltimore, a city that embraced mass transit as a viable alternative to adding even more lanes to the already-horrific Beltway. Mom believed in exposing me to the culture of the city, so we rode the bus together on weekends along with the diversity-rich ridership of any large city.

One Saturday afternoon on our way home from our favorite museum, a woman from Africa climbed the stairs and sat a football field worth of rows in front of us. Mother must have been temporarily distracted and missed the telltale eye-widening which inevitably precedes broadly exclaimed truth-telling. And so the tiny blonde child accompanied by her tiny blonde mother shouted at the top of her not-so-tiny lungs: “SHE SURE IS BLAAAAACK.”

We were a substantial (and expensive) taxi ride away from our home, but my mother rang the signal for the next stop and we exited the bus within seconds. I imagine that the entire bus burst into laughter as soon as we were gone. Or perhaps not. Baltimore in 1967 wasn’t exactly a bastion of race camaraderie. It might not have been a laughing matter at all.