Every Wednesday morning, there’s a kid on the bus (he looks to be about twelve and I don’t know what he’s doing riding the bus alone). He asks me the most ridiculous questions. For some reason, he’s always there, always sitting beside me. I don’t know how it happens. I sit down and he’s there – I don’t look for him, he doesn’t know where there’s going to be a free seat when he climbs aboard.

About a week ago, I was standing in the aisle, as there were no seats available. As students boarded the bus, I found myself being gradually pushed to the back of the bus. I looked to my right, and there the kid was, sitting there, his short legs dangling six inches from the rubber ridged floor, smiling up at me.

“Hi.” He usually instigated our exchanges.

“Hello.”

“Do you think there was ever a time when um…” he paused, perhaps for effect, but probably not. “…Peru only had 25 people living in it?”

“Maybe.” I was impressed he was aware there was a country called Peru. He probably just saw it on a map somewhere.

“Because I think it did.”

“Then you’re probably right. It probably did have 25 people at one point.”

“Okay.” He paused again. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Tasha.” I’ve never been one to speak down or change the tone of my voice when speaking to kids. That’s probably why they don’t like me – I don’t make things simpler for them to understand. It’s not that I dislike them, I just figure if they give up talking to me, fine, if they persevere, it’s more interesting. “What’s your name?”

About five people sitting and standing around us turned to look at me, as though I were some creepy criminal trying to figure out where the kid lived, when he got home from school, and if his parents sometimes left the house at night. I attempted to look more disinterested, but ended up jerking my head to look out the window, making me look that much more suspicious.

“I’m Jose.”

“Good to meet you, Jose.”

“I’m ten.”

“I can see that.” I wanted to get off. I felt my face becoming warmer as the people in the bus watched our interactions. Of course, it couldn’t be Jose’s fault that I was talking him, he was just a kid. Of course, I had to be the creepy one, asking for information from little kids who were traveling alone.

“How can you see that? I can’t tell how old you are by looking at you.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Sixteen.”

I nodded. We had reached my stop, “Bye, Jose.”

“Bye, Tasha.”

Finals came and went. Over our three-week winter break, I didn’t see Jose once. In fact, I saw hardly anyone. It appeared that everyone had left the state – the campus was empty, the streets were quiet, and I found myself alone on the bus at 10 o’clock at night, sitting in the second to last row of seats.

It was more awkward than can be explained: Without the hum of the engine and the crushing of the ice as the bus bumped along in the street, it was dead silent. It was just the bus driver and me.

In an attempt to make it less awkward, I tried to engage the driver in conversation. I’m going to blame it on my lack of socializing for the previous two weeks, but the only thing I could think of to say to the bus driver was a question I’d been asked by Jose: “Do you think there was ever a time when cars went so slowly, that an old man could walk faster than them?”

“What?!” He couldn’t hear me. So when we reached a red light, I began to walk toward the front of the bus. Unfortunately, it was one of those speed-sensitive lights that turn green if you are going the designated speed. I was halfway to the front when the light turned green again and the bus lurched forward, causing me to slip on one of the many sleet-puddles that littered the aisle; to save myself, I took a swan dive to my right and landed horizontally on the ducked tape, multi-shades-of-mauve seat. I don’t think the bus driver noticed, or if he did, he didn’t let on. I was just another story he would repeat to his RTD friends tomorrow.

I had a slight headache, but was now more than determined to make it to the front of the bus. I gripped onto seat backs and pulled myself forward, stepping carefully. When I made it to the front seat, I prepared to ask the question again: “Do you think there was ever a time when cars went so slowly that an old man could walk faster than them?” but I caught myself. He looked at me in the gigantic rear view mirror with sunken eyes and bushy, white eyebrows. He couldn’t have been younger than seventy-five.

“What was that?”

“I just said hello.”

“No, you asked me a question.”

“No I didn’t; all I said was hello.” He furrowed his eyebrows at me. “Oh, and I asked what your name was.”

“No you didn’t. You asked me a real question.”

He was a light away from my stop and I attempted to make myself busy, opening all the zippers on my backpack. “What?” I prayed the light would turn. It did.

“I said you asked me a real question. One of them thinking questions.”

We stopped. “This is my stop.” He didn’t open the door. It pulsed in my mind that he could have been a crazy nut. I could be in the papers tomorrow as the female student riding the bus alone when the bus driver went homicidal.

I stood in front of him, waiting for him to open the door.

“What’s the question!?” He nearly shouted at me.

I stood unblinkingly before him with a tight chest, racking my brain for a “thinking question”. “What is life?” I squeaked.

“You think I know?! Ha!” He continued to chuckle to himself as he opened the door and let me off the bus. I waited for him to make it all the way down the street before I headed home.

The first day back at school, I boarded the bus and walked to the back. There were never any vacant seats by the time I got on; I stood and stared straight ahead, repeating to myself over and over again my first class and it’s room number.

“Hi Tasha.” I turned around. Jose smiled. He’d lost a tooth. “I lost a tooth,” he pointed to the empty space on his gum-line.

“I see that.”

“You see everything.”

“It’s true. I’m like a God or something.”

“No, you’re not.” I’d offended him. I guess he was religious or something.

“Right. Sorry.” We didn’t speak for a few minutes and I went back to repeating my schedule in my head.

“Did you ever wonder if we were in a giant cage, but we just didn’t know it because the cage was so big?”

My head involuntarily whipped around and I gave him a somewhat confused and deranged look. “Can’t say that I have.”

When my stop came, I was the first one to hop off, eager to make up the time I would inevitably lose getting lost. Fortunately, it was easier to find than I predicted. I power-walked there and sat down in the class of about 30. I didn’t know anyone there. Math 2020 – frightening.

The door opened and the professor walked in, followed by Jose. Jose sat beside me. His red notebook was the size of the upper half of his body.

“Oh, you go here, too?” He asked me. I would have never guessed that he was one of those prodigious ten-year olds who skipped eight years of school and went to college. Either that, or maybe I was in a super-remedial math class.
Before I could reply, the professor began his introduction and then gave us some sample problems to work out.

No wonder they called it a problem. I imagined my brain making little noises like a puppy that’s being squeezed a tad too tightly.

“Now check your answers with your partner.”

Jose, sitting beside me, in his third grade handwriting, began to correct my work.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I told him. “I don’t get it.”

The professor put the final solution on the chalkboard and I squinted at it.

“Do you need glasses?” Jose asked me.

The professor began to explain the solution and I felt my face heat up by about twenty degrees.

“Don’t worry,” Jose told me, “I’ll help you after class.”

“I’m beyond help.”

“I’ll explain it in a way you’ll get it.”

“Thanks, Jose,” I said meekly. “You’re awesome.”

I’d been schooled by a ten year old.

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