In Memory of Bruce on the Bus

If you live in the United States or even if you live elsewhere but follow U.S. politics, you got a glimpse of Republican senators ‘asking questions’ at the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. I’d call the questioning unseemly but that barely scrapes the top layer of excrement left in piles on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

The GOP good old boys made me remember Bruce, the 5th grade boy on our school bus, who constantly, every day, every ride, talked about turds. No reaction from anyone would make Bruce stop. He would just keep talking and laughing about turds from the minute he got on the bus until we pulled up to school an hour later. It was a long bus ride, a circuitous route in a spread-out working-class suburb of Detroit. In the winter, the ride would be longer, more laughing, more turds, and the heat on the bus would be fired up to the top setting so the windows would fog over, and life just seemed to be suspended in Bruce’s turd world. I’d want to kiss the earth when the bus driver finally pulled open the doors to let us out.

We all spent time on that yellow school bus yesterday watching Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Josh Hawley do their best Bruce imitations in front of a gloriously qualified, composed, knife sharp Black woman. And just like in the old days, nobody on the bus could stop them. Not the Democratic senators, not the Committee chairman, not even the remarkably poised and unflappable nominee. You can’t stop a turd-talking Bruce on a bus. If I’d forgotten that, Republican senators reminded me yesterday.

I bet they were really something to behold in 5th grade.

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Photo by Vahid Moeini Jazani on Unsplash