I should have shared more with you.

When I was a young boy, the house we lived in had a long dirt driveway which was flanked on both sides by grazing pastures on each side. I hated that driveway. Not the driveway itself, but the walk down it. As I would make my way down the driveway to get on the school bus every morning, I would dread the end. Not because I was going to school. Not because I would always seems to pick up rocks in my cheap Skycity shoes and cut up my feet. But, only because I was forced to wait at my neighbors until the bus arrived. The neighbors were and still are the most redneck, uncivilized, and as I saw them, the most dangerous people in my small world at the time. The mother would blow smoke in my face as she talked to me.  The husband would often hit me in the back of the head for small annoyances that his children would impart on him. I was just another target for him to let loose his anger upon it seemed. The oldest son, Jason, would torment me every time he and I were in close proximity. The bus was extremely late one day and instead of us just waiting as we were supposed to, he decided that it would be funny to snatch my pants off in front of all the other Kitchens clan and try to jam a bandit marker in my ass. He was in his late teens and I was 9 at the time so there was no way I could have physically gotten him off of me. While kicking and hitting him as hard as I could, I screamed for help, but was only met with the laughter by the other kids. He was eventually stopped by Mr. Pete when the bus arrived. I remember seeing the old man come running across the ditch and through the yard towards us. He kick Jason off of me and sent him scrambling in the dust of the yard. Since no one was home, parent wise, at either house Mr. Pete put me on the bus and left Jason there at the curb. At school, there really wasn't much done. The Principal said that since he had not actually achieved his goal and that we were not on school grounds. There was nothing that could be done. My father was called and he took me home for the day. Jason was banned from using the bus for a while by Mr. Pete. They in all essence had swept what had happened under the rug.
I never voluntarily went over there again and still to this day do not like taking a left on Groaning Rock Rd to go past their trailer.
I never tell told you this story because I am embarrassed by it. I should have.