The Level Lecture: or how not to get to sit on the back of the bus

It happened sometime in September of 1988, the exact date lost to history. The words spoken can only be paraphrased as this was a time before smart phones and cameras in every pocket documented every aspect of life from the epic down to the most mundane. The man who gave us those words cannot even tell us what he said as he is no longer among the living. But for the members of the Cooper Junior High School cross country team that season, the Lever Lecture, as it has been ever since, will live on forever.

The saddest picture of Cooper I could find

It started with a simple fact that all kids know about riding the bus: the cool kids sit in the back. That’s how these things worked in junior high. As far from authority as you could be. You sat in the back of the classroom, the back of the cafeteria and you damn sure sat as far back as you could on the bus. The older kids had priority. Seventh graders had to wait for the eighth graders to take their seats in the back before they could take the empty seats closest to the back. This was the protocol. This went not just for buses to school, but school buses to any event, like Cross Country meets

At our Junior High School the boys and girls cross country teams didn’t practice together. We had different coaches, but we held meets together and took the bus together to away meets. In seventh grade, I sat near the back, but I had to defer to the eighth-grade boys, even the ones who were slower than me. I wasn’t to upset about it because I knew the next season, as an eighth grader, I would get to rule the bus.

Remember the weird smell of the seats?

Except we got a new coach. Coach Daleskey went from art teacher to assistant principal and decided to cut back on his other school duties, so he stepped down as boys cross country coach. Coach Saylor, who coached my sister two years earlier in Cross Country became the coach. I’d had him as a teacher for seventh grade science. Physics was his specialty. He was a little rougher of a coach than Coach Daleskey, not quite Bobby Knight, but willing to yell if he felt he needed to take control of the twenty-five awkward, annoying junior high boys placed in his charge. Practices were harder and expectations were higher than the previous season and after a few weeks of training, we were ready for the first meet of the year. Mostly, we were ready to sit on the back of the bus. But our plans of ruling the roost from the rear were quickly shattered.

Right before we were getting on the bus Coach Saylor told the boys to sit in the front of the bus. We looked at him, then each other, confused. Did he not know the protocol? We had paid our dues, we had earned the right to sit in the back of the bus. Surely, he was joking. We’d heard him wrong, right? We all stood around, waiting for him to let us in on the joke. But no smile broke across his face. No laugh punctured the silence.

 Finally, he explained.

“The bus bounces your kidneys and that can cause some discomfort and impact your running,” he said, short and succinct. “You can be on the back of the bus on the way home.”

We were a bit confused, but when a teacher, a science teacher even, tells you something, at that age you generally believed it. Also, there was no arguing with Coach Saylor, not if you knew what was good for you. When he laid down the law, you nodded your head, you accepted it and you moved on. But what had us more puzzled is that what he was telling us also broke school bus protocol. Generally, you sat in the same seat on the way back that you did on the way there. Now we were going to have to take seats from other people, mainly the girls, who were not told to sit in the front of the bus. Why did their coach not believe the same thing our coach did?

We climbed on the bus and begrudgingly took seats near the front of the bus, hiding our sour faces behind the tall, mud green seats of the bus. Once we were all settled the ride began. Us boys up front grumbled under our breath, loud enough for us all to share in the mood, but quiet enough that Coach Saylor didn’t hear us. No reason to get him mad at us and incur extra laps at the end of the meet.

That day, the ride must have been bumpier than normal. Or maybe the girls were unaccustomed to the bumps and how much you get bumped up and down while in the back of the bus. It started as an occasional squeal or yell when the bus hit a small bump. The frequency and volume of the yelps increased as the bumps became more frequent. Us boys were annoyed that the girls were enjoying an extra bumpy ride while our kidneys remained unshaken in the middle of the bus. Plus the noise level was getting annoying.

Then the big bump happened. I think it might have been a set of train tracks. And the big scream, screams really, because it came at all different pitches and volumes. It was loud, maybe not the loudest screams of the ride, but when added to the fifteen minutes of yelps and screams and bumps and cries, it was the one that put Coach Saylor up from his seat, his face a deep red.

“That’s enough,” he yelled. If it were a cartoon, steam would have been shooting out of his ears.

The screaming instantly stopped. The entire bus snapped to attention, all eyes on Coach Saylor. He pushed his glasses up his nose, took a deep breath and then…

The lever lecture began. And it was glorious. And long. And loud. That was Coach Saylor’s way. Again, the exact words he said are lost to history, but in short, he recapped for all of us on the bus who had already had him as a science teacher all of the details of how a third-class lever works, for indeed, a school bus acts like a third-class lever. In a third-class lever, the force is between the fulcrum and the load. On the bus, the fulcrum is the back tires of the bus, the force is the bouncing of the road, and the load was the girls sitting on the back of the bus. He continued, naming a few other examples then launched into the longer explanation about kidneys and bouncing than he had given us when we first got on. The lecture went on for a few minutes all of us looking and listening while trying to avoid direct eye contact, afraid to get called on to answer a question. When he was done, he scanned over the seats, making sure we all understood.

So this is what it looks like

“Now please be quiet the rest of the ride,” Coach Saylor said then sat back down in his seat.

And we were quiet the rest of the ride. When we pulled into the parking lot for the meet, we silently shuffled off the bus, more like we were headed to a morgue than a junior high sporting event. It took a while for everyone to loosen up, relax, and get ready for the race.

I don’t remember who we ran against that day or how we did. On the way back, the boys moved to their customary seats in the back, with the girls interspaced between us. The seats up front by Coach Saylor were empty. The road home was just as bumpy as it was on the way to the meet, but we kept our voices down.

Also, the rest of my school years I always did well in Physics. Coincidence? I think not.

Thanks for reading.