It meant that, every month, Claudia and I got to visit our dad in Port Hardy. He said this after we’d passed Nimpkish. “I don’t drink anyway,” she’d say. For a second I almost understood my sister—why she might want to be close to him, or someone like him. We took vitamins, ate vegetables, and recycled. My bus hit a bum and EVERYTHING flew out! We weren’t used to carbonated beverages, so they made us hyperactive and strange. I didn’t even kick the back of her seat to remind her of me, of us, of the secret and unspoken pact we’d had since we were too young to speak. Hundreds of nursery rhymes, baby songs, stories for kids & learning games for toddlers, KidloLand has everything for kids under 5. 5 Min Stories (291) 10 Min Stories (125) 15 Min Stories (44) 20 Mins+ (88) Adventures (115) African Stories (62) Age 0-3 (78) Age 4-6 (264) Age 7-12 (331) All 5 Min Bedtime Stories (287) All Fairy Tales (192) All Poems for Kids (203) Animals (234) Baby Books (57) Bedtime Stories, Fairy Tales and Poems for Kids (42) Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales (38) Chapters (239) Christmas Stories … Then he came back because the hotel was expensive—separation was expensive!—so for a few days the house was exactly like before: messy, crowded, loud. She listened to the Dead Kennedys and the Dayglo Abortions. As we dragged our backpacks through the parking lot toward our bus, Claudia said, “I’m not sitting beside you. The woman looked like she’d swooned or died or had low blood sugar. I could easily tell a ten-year-old from an eleven-year-old, but everyone over twenty seemed vague and dangerous. If you have a Chinese dwarf hamster, you especially need to ensure that it has lots of places to hide. And now this: The Separation. But None of Them Are Named Number 16 Bus Stop. He told her how his girlfriend had cheated on him when she went on a three-week tour of Europe, and Claudia seemed to feel real sympathy for him. The bus had gray seats with little footrests that flipped down, and wide windows that didn’t open. . They started swapping party stories. He carried a backpack and wore a toque. They belonged to our parents. It felt soft and ticklish and usually put me into a trance. Here, you can make food, run your own food store, become a fashion designer, go on an adventure with dinosaurs, and interact with them to create your own stories! I tried to read my book, but it seemed boring and childish now that I’d seen the kind of book I could be reading. I coloured my hair with markers from school, so that my head looked and smelled like blueberries. “I just need to know that you girls are okay.” He knelt down so he was at our level. My friend’s sort of expecting me.”, “You can call her. So we just stood there with our hands dangling at our sides. But life is more complicated than that.”, That’s when the tears started. Create sweet home stories together! Living there for less than a year had aged our dad. “I’m in Port Hardy,” he said. 22 October 2010: Two social workers who dealt with Baby Peter, Gillie Christou and Maria Ward, lose their claim for unfair dismissal. university.”, Then they didn’t talk for about twenty minutes. “As long as you promise not to tell Claudia.”. “Me too.”, Claudia and Mark talked for the next three hours. And every time you want to talk to me, just remind yourself that you don’t even know me.”. “He’s now dating Pocahontas.” She paused. But the purple bangs and the makeup had paid off, and she was going to cash in. They talked and laughed as they shared fries and a cigarette. I’m not a baby anymore.”, “I know that.” Mom lit the joint and I heard the paper crackle as it burned. Sunday dinner with Grandma. Packages Story ... Story Schools Contact THIS IS A TEMPORARY HOMEPAGE DUE TO THE LOCKDOWN(S) OF 2020/2021 I could feel Claudia’s elation in the air. Welcome to Baby Panda World. RECOGNIZE ANIMALS Giraffes have long necks, … I wanted to watch my sister grab her backpack and strut away. “Get back here, young lady! “You have a car?” she said. Read Foster care baby left on bus latest on ITV News. Other baby names turned down by Kiwi officials: Fish and Chips, Yeah Detroit, Sex Fruit, Hitler, and Number 16 Bus Stop. We simply rely on the author to be honest about whether a story is true or fantasy. Our mother ran a local grocery co-op and wore skirts made of hemp before hemp was chic. Through the bus depot’s dirty window, I could see Claudia and Mark. I don’t know what my sister liked about him. Who cares that its seats made me lose all feeling in my ass? She had purple hair and a fake ID that claimed she was nineteen and from Oshawa. Hi kids, the well-loved Little Panda’s Farm has opened up new land in this summer. We’ve had these plans for practically forever.”. The Separation happened this way: first my mom left, and stayed with one of her sisters for a week. Claudia put on her earphones, adjusted her pillow, and closed her eyes. “On a scale of one to ten, how much do you think your father and I have messed you girls up?” This was the kind of question Mom started asking over dinner. [...] Short story: 'The Separation' by Deborah Willis [...]. Rate This Story: Excellent Very Good Good Fair Poor: ... Then came the teasing "awww look at the ickle baby" Mitchell said. “Hold on, okay?” I put my hand over the mouthpiece and screamed, “Mom! I sat beside her, and I was hugely, oppressively happy. “Because I don’t want to.”, “Mom, it’s gross. correct.” She added, “Your father never understood that.”, I’d never taken a multiple-choice exam. “You’re such a crybaby.”, Another thing that went wrong was that the last seats of the bus were already taken by people who were obviously cooler than us. The year my parents seprated coincided with the year I adored my sister. She’d taken off her hoodie and wore just her Converse, jeans, and a black tank top. It started as imitation, but in the end, it stuck. “Very convincing.”, Dad went as far away as he could on fifty dollars. *Nursery Rhymes:《Baby Shark… that kind of thing at home, where they knew we were safe. . What our parents didn’t understand was that we were busy. “I’ll sit on your lap for ten seconds,” I said. She understood something that our parents didn’t get: that they could never really damage us. Full, Full, Full of Love. She had been the only one of her friends who lived in a two-parent home, and that had embarrassed her. “I hope you do get fondled.”. “I’m not kidding,” she said. Bray-on-Thames UK #RBWM. bus, my bowels were straining with every ounce of muscle in them to keep it in until I got. She let him listen to her tapes and gave him the kind of musical education some people pay money for. I bet you don’t even know where that is.”. Usually, Claudia and I forgot them entirely, or forgot the most important part of them. Now.”. The point is, I never the separation knew what caused The Separation because I was with Claudia, and Mickey DeSadist was singing us a lullaby. “Who cares? You’d like it.”, “I don’t know. It turned out that I got bored of that pretty quick. After we arrived on Friday night, he’d take us to the Legion. “Why don’t you come sit on my lap?”, I looked up from Sid’s pretty snarl. Everything. I didn't notice my back pack wasn't fully zipped. “We always tried to make sure you were happy.” Mom covered her face with her hands. Mom was always forgetting how young I was. “It was awesome meeting you.”, “You too.” Claudia put the paper in the back pocket of her jeans, and I felt her movement in my knees, which were propped against her seat. And one evening, while Mom and I were in the kitchen, she cut herself thick bangs, bleached them, and dyed them purple. Alex came back a few minutes later carrying two sippy cups (his mom often looked after his younger cousins"). Their humour and neuroses were planted deep in our brains, and we’d inherited their voices, their sayings, their stories. When we’d passed Wellington, my sister took out her Walkman and Mark said, “What are you listening to?”, “D.O.A. So we leave trusting that a true story is in fact true to the reader. You can also purchase elaborate plastic tubes for your hamster to explore. But she had some good stories. There was a picture of us on the fridge: Claudia with ripped overalls and hair that looked like it had never been washed, and me, naked except for a T-shirt that read, I Hate TV. One was full of milk the other was just water. She went to concerts in people’s basements and all-ages shows at Little Fernwood. Claudia’s teenage rebellion was awkward, an adolescent flail. Each obsessed over what the other was doing, or might be doing. She was my sister and I loved her. “If you want to come home,” I said, “why don’t you just say so?”, “That’s very sweet, June. Maybe it was all that wind battering his skin. But still, when the door was sealed shut, we were fully separated from our parents—and this hardly ever happened, since school was full of parental replacements. “You’re such a crybaby.” Another thing that went wrong was that the last seats of the bus were already taken by people who were obviously cooler than us. I’d had no idea that Claudia had ever been drunk. maybe it was that he looked as vulnerable as a baby: pale skin, wet lips, fly-away hair. It looked like it had been left behind, forgotten, though it must have been the first snowfall of the year. She was pretty, with shiny dark hair and a round face. ... baby pants. Mark put his backpack on the shelf above the seat and sat down beside Claudia. Her eighteenth-century dress was slipping off one shoulder. “He’s now sleeping in a bus depot in Port Hardy. There was one bus trip that was different. The neighbours complained because our parents never mowed the lawn, believing that children should have high grass to play in and dandelion seeds to blow. In case you change your mind?”, Mark wrote on a scrap of paper and handed it to her. “Get off me,” she said, out of habit, without meaning it. When we stopped in Nanaimo, a stranger got on and sat beside Claudia. He’s crying again!”, She took the phone from me. With the brand-new beehive and fishpond to play with, BabyBus invites you to create your own farm story in the Little Panda’s Farm during the summer season. There was one thing I liked about it too. Just like that, they were friends again. The only reason I didn’t do that was because there was a stranger beside me—an overweight woman with a winter coat, despite the fact that it was hot in the bus. After that, the other tenants teased him by calling him White Man, even though most of them were white too. But when Mom found out about her, her hands and her voice got shaky. We were ten minutes away from Mark’s stop, from the town on the edge of the ocean where he lived, from the place where I was going to be separated from my sister forever. And I liked the way she ran her fingers through my hair. “And the woman beside me is so fat. Then she added, “To visit some friends,” which was a lie. And she kept looking up at him, through her purple bangs. If I had leaned forward, I would have smelled his cigarette breath coming at me from between their seats. Don’t breathe on me. Or that the air that shot from the vents above our heads smelled like old carpets? Let's get on the bus and explore the animal park together! But we’d been raised to let people go on their own journeys, to allow others to grow and change. “Oh my God.” Claudia stepped onto the bus and showed the driver her ticket. ... Miss Williams said after vacating the bus, she immediately realised her friend's baby was trapped in the bus door and was being dragged along. Then she stomped out of the kitchen. No matter what we did, we could never separate them from us. I listen to pretty much everything.”. A couple of nights before we left for Port Hardy, Claudia listened to Nomeansno in her room and I sat at the kitchen table, using my pastels to draw a picture of Sid Vicious. Maybe Claudia liked the hair thing too. Once Upon a Bus is a world-on-wheels of #Storytelling for schools, PTAs, community and private hire. He had huge pecs and there was a forest behind him. His hair was always tangled, and he wore clothes I’d never seen before: fraying plaid shirts, jeans that were too big for him, rubber boots. “What do you do? She sat next to me, purse on the floor, coat spread over her legs like a blanket. For once, she couldn’t kick me out of her room, slam the door, or tell me to go somewhere and die. This was farther from home than I’d ever been, and I loved the bus trip. “I hate to think of you being harmed by The Separation. I heard her peeing, and I said, “That guy you were talking to was such a loser.”. I saw birds in their flight. It was one of the few times my sister let me hang out in her room, and sometimes I wonder if she was protecting me, if she knew there was a fight going on downstairs. It was a big, rumbling house by the water. Next to his the separation workman’s hands, Claudia’s looked like they belonged to a child. They’re this band from Vancouver.” Mark didn’t say anything, so my sister, her voice full of hope, asked, “What kind of music do you like?”, “I like tons of stuff. “Yeah.” I tried to copy Claudia’s nonchalance, her way of averting her eyes from our mother’s. I mean, if you do, then I will. “Okay. But one evening, there must have been an argument. One morning I was on my period and had four tampons and two pads. And I’ll give you a ride up to Port Hardy tomorrow.”. Maybe Laura got sick of him, or he was tired of being so poor, or he missed us, or he missed the way Mom swayed heavily through the house in her hemp skirts. We’d been humiliated countless times when our parents dragged us to marches against apartheid and solidarity dances for Cuba. A man hit a crying baby girl on the back of the head in a shocking assault on a bus. Mom was always talking to her sisters, women friends, and anyone else who was up for a little schadenfreude. Watch and interact with fun stories for babies, toddlers and young children from your favourite CBeebies shows. Clothing shop, supermarket, restaurant...Enjoy shopping. Stories cover a broad range of primary topics. When Mark got off the bus, I tossed my backpack over onto his seat and said “’Scuse me” to the woman beside me, who had almost finished her novel. Director Ron Howard gave his four children middle names inspired by … I bought a bag of chips and ate them by myself. Other than that, we could do or eat or say whatever we wanted. Make a hat for the cone of ice cream! Had my mom answered the phone, he probably would have spoken triumphantly: “I’m in Port Hardy. These can be as simple as empty cardboard tubes, such as those from paper towel, wrapping paper, or toilet paper rolls. Then, on Saturday, Dad always wanted us to do something in nature. There was a smokehouse in the back, but Dad didn’t know how to use it and had almost burned it down accidentally. Mom gave you the money, and I’m hungry.”, “Here.” Claudia took a five-dollar bill from her pocket and threw it at me. As young children, Claudia and I were encouraged to be wild. He jerked awake, and his twitch made him and my sister laugh. In Port Hardy, our dad moved from place to place, and finally ended up renting a room in a house where people like him—people without luck or money—ended up. He asked my sister where she was headed and she said, “Port Hardy,” which was the truth. 8. The man in the headdress looked like some of the guys my dad hung out with at the Legion, except a lot less hunched and exhausted. But to support the big tobacco companies was out of the question. She stood in front of the fridge for about three seconds. I was doing homework, and Mom was drinking tea and reading a book about the Buddhist practice of non-attachment. No wonder Claudia found it difficult to be a teenager. Baby bus story educational games for kidsGame Edukasi Baby Bus untuk anak-anak. And, bonus: she’d been able to fake tears—my parents are getting divorced, etc., etc.—to get out of gym class. These messages were angry or heartbroken or flirtatious. I bet you don’t even know where that is.”. “Thanks.”. I leaned against Claudia as though she was a pillow. I still liked the way she smelled, of tea and smoke and lemongrass shampoo. Baby Baby - CRAZY TOUR STORIES Ep. Instead of Crosby, Stills and Nash, she listened to Minor Threat and Bad Brains. She listened to her Walkman, and I could hear the tape rewind, play, rewind again. ‎In BabyBus World, there will be new levels each week for you to explore! Names and life stories had been penned onto the walls, and usually Claudia and I hung out in there and made fun of people who wrote things like Linds B. wuz here and I wanna do Kris 4ever. “Thanks for waiting.” I kicked the door of the stall Claudia was in, but she didn’t say anything back. Baby Panda World - BabyBus Education Earthquake Safety Tips Education Super Panda Jobs -BabyBus Game Education Baby Panda Care Games -BabyBus Education Healthy Eater - BabyBus Education More ways to shop: Find an Apple Store or other retailer near … I rested my face against her bare arm, and the moisture of our skin stuck us together. All rights reserved. Then she inhaled and exhaled, deeply and calmly, the way she’d learned to do from a book. Claudia liked her because Laura shared her makeup. I used some of the change to phone our parents, since Claudia seemed to have forgotten that we were supposed to do that. My homework still consisted of memorizing how to spell difficult words, like friend and people. You will also want to provide your hamster with toys for stimulation. Instead, because I thought it might be a boy calling for Claudia, I ran to the phone, almost tripped over the cord, and grabbed it before anyone else could. They talked about it as though it had capital letters, and they both seemed to want to make it as crazy as the parties they liked to throw. Marta fell pregnant while living in their repurposed bus in a car park in Wales (Image: Rowan Griffiths/Daily Mirror) But their world came crashing down four days later when Dylan died suddenly. Little Baby Bum is a fun and educational show for kids featuring classic and new nursery rhymes and loved by babies and their parents all around the world. Then, from a payphone, he called us. “I bet you don’t even know where that is.” Then he burst into tears. Claudia was fourteen, and was at the beginning of the long rebellion that would define her life. But even that was no fun without my sister to tell me I was disgusting. After a while, I realized that her stories sounded familiar. “You’re so weird, Mom.” Claudia brushed her fork over the quinoa on her plate. Claudia froze. Our bodies were built by the lentils and flax they’d fed us. “Do you have any idea what motherhood is like? Our parents were awed by the latest catastrophe they’d created. They leaned close to each other, and in the space between their seats, I could see that their heads almost touched. “Great hair.”. I followed her into the depot’s bathroom, which had only two stalls, an empty soap dispenser, and an overflowing garbage. He must have been a young guy, but he seemed old to me at the time. In her twenties, she came to understand how to really get to our parents, and her techniques became much more sophisticated. I’d been hoping to break her record. With the brand-new beehive and fishpond to play with, BabyBus invites you to create your own farm story … Claudia and I didn’t hear it because we were in her bedroom listening to music. Then Claudia stomped into the room, with her purple hair and her boots that left marks on the lino. First, two daughters. Play games with little animals and feed them. One summer, when I was eight, we’d been forced to stand outside the local supermarket and protest the importing of grapes from Chile. Don’t look at me. Hi kids, the well-loved Little Panda’s Farm has opened up new land in this summer. We were raised on lentils, brown rice, Neil Young, and solstice celebrations. They didn’t seem to notice that, separated, they were more married than ever. We jumped from seat to seat, and competed to see who could jump the farthest. When she got off the phone with Dad, she called her sisters, her friends at the veggie co-op, and her Amnesty letter-writing group. “Mom says you should pay for therapy for us.”. “Kind of,” she said. A sweet story of a young boy named Jay … As Alice Munro says, “the emotional range and depth of these stories, their clarity and deftness, is astonishing.” This particular story is also happily, warmly funny—a pleasure to read. Mom looked up from her book. “You’re pretty much the first girl I’ve talked to since then.”. “At the She was cruel and lovely and totally awesome. I’d tell Dad that she’d stayed in Victoria for an extra day, for volleyball practice or something, and that she’d arrive tomorrow. There’s great joy in finding a new writer whose short fiction shows both confidence of craft and effortless verisimitude—as with Deborah Willis, whose debut collection, Vanishing, is now on sale. Port what? I liked it because it meant a whole day—ten hours, including stops—with Claudia. Dad was so disoriented and absent lately that he’d believe anything. 397 [VIDEO] • Digital Tour Bus On this episode of DTB’s “Crazy Tour Stories”, the rock band, Baby Baby, shares crazy moments from touring, while on the Vans Warped Tour. This really captured the relationship between sisters at that age and I love the parents. I took the music seriously—more seriously, it turned out, than Claudia ever did. The only people who claim to listen to everything are the ones who know nothing, who are happy to swallow whatever the radio feeds them. Who cares what she’s reading?”, “You are. Then I said, “He was so ugly.”. And she’s reading this sickening book.”, “Shut up!” Claudia slammed her wet hand against the mirror, against the image of her own face. will have my 14 year old friend read this story. And she would let us take turns holding Roger, teaching us the right way to carry him. Mark didn’t get out a book or anything, and I imagined that he was sitting there with his legs spread wide, staring at the seat in front of him. And at least once over the weekend, Dad would cry. He said, “Is anyone sitting here?”, Claudia said, “Nope. “Did I say something wrong?”, “I think she hoped her hair would annoy you.”, “But I think it’s cute. That bus was our territory. He would leave again over the years, and Mom would leave him too––whenever they craved some entertainment––but they always came home. The words you know and love . That makes sense.” Mark sounded genuinely disappointed, as though he actually liked my sister. Or more than average?”. As we passed Woss, Mark woke up from what I imagined to be dreams about fondling my sister. “My friend would shit. We went hiking or fishing, and after, we’d usually hang out with Laura and Roger. Mark said that he was going to Port McNeill, the stop before hers. When Mom picked up, she said, “Is that you, Juney-looney?”, When I called our dad, he said, “Hey, June-bug!” He spoke in his ultra-happy voice, the one he used when he was trying to convince us that he was ultra-happy in his new life. Go for it,” despite the fact that I should have been sitting there, that I was her sister, that I was stuck next to a woman who wouldn’t share her sexy book. Wash up the Pet The dog is … Baby Elsa Bathing 4.266465 Pou Baby Bathing 3.323355 There are 1270 games related to BABY BUS GAMES , such as "Baby Caring Games With Anna" and "Bus Subway Runner" that you can play on MaFa.com for free. New short fiction, every week. Really, how much cool stuff can you do on a bus? I don’t even know where that is.”. She heaved the fridge door open then slammed it shut. They got off the bus together and my sister didn’t wait for me, didn’t even turn around to look at me. One of the straps had slipped off her shoulder, and Mark kept looking at it. I was eleven and still looked like a boy: hair that my mom cut too short, legs that I hadn’t started to shave. Mark slept with his face turned toward my sister. “I can’t,” she said. His soft baby breathing even calmed Claudia’s hormonal rages. I could almost inhale it. They sent messages to each other through Claudia and me: Tell your father/Please inform your mother. So Claudia chose a seat in the middle. My sister always took the window seat and put the armrest down between us. I wore the same outfit almost every day: jeans with embossed flowers and a green sweater. About throwing up off a balcony. Lockdown 2020 Welcome Events! I didn’t say anything because part of me wanted her to do it. At Baby Panda's home, you can play freely and interact with your favorite family members! One good thing about being separated from Claudia was that I got a window seat. Baby Panda is not at home today, and the foods have decided to hold a dress-up party. We were always outside, and often naked. It was sweet of Mom to worry, but I knew that, for Claudia, The Separation had its advantages. But I go back to Port on weekends.”, “Cool,” said my sister, as though it really was. Every time they said this, Claudia crossed her arms. About eating mushrooms and walking down Government Street to watch the tourists’ faces melt. Baby Panda loves food and has lots of food at home. “You keep her in line, then. About passing out then waking up beside her friend’s hamster cage with the hamster kicking wood chips into her face. “That totally sucks.”, He said that, since the breakup, he’d just focused on work. Mom sipped her camomile. She always brought a pillow, which she propped against the window. Then there was a time while my. So Claudia chose a seat in the middle. © 2009 by Deborah Willis. I wanted to ask her which song she was listening to, but I didn’t dare. 702, 2-1-11 Nihonbashi Kayabacho Chuo-ku, Tokyo, Baby Panda’s Potty Training - Toilet Time, Cookies help us deliver our services. Anyway, we figured that Dad would sort it out on his own, since he was our dad, since he was a grown-up. Our parents had always said that they didn’t mind if we experimented with alcohol as long as we did it in their house. But when I was eleven, I didn’t understand how young and stupid she was, so I copied everything she did. THE BIGGEST STORIES ACROSS BRISTOL IN YOUR INBOX.