Sunday, May 28, 2006

A Traveling Lord of the Flies

In my pursuit of community newspapers and their police logs, I stumbled upon the Windham Independent. While their police call column could not compare in pure strangeness to "The Blotter" in the Gorham Times, Windham's community newspaper did carry a column called News of the Weird. While this isn't about a local incident, it's bizarro factor compells me to share it. It's really inexplicable.

"Long Island, N.Y., bus driver Michael Cianci, 38, was chareged in April with child-endangerment for allegedly setting up a hierarchical social structure to enforce discipline among the Tottenville sixth-graders who rode what he called his "Death Cheese Bus." Cianci, who was the "Emperor" had a 12-tiered ranking system, from "Lord" to the low-end "Speds" ("special education"). Police said Cianci permitted his high-ranking enforcers to rough up misbehaving kids."

Wow. Not much you can say about that, except I really wish I knew how and why he came up with the name Death Cheese Bus.

1 comment:

Michelle Souliere said...

Wow. The Death Cheese Bus?!!! I know I hated riding on the schoolbus. Never did again after I had to for kindergarten, because I was in walking distance of my elementary school and high school. In fact, I remember opting to take the regular Metro bus to get to high school on really crummy days, rather than the school bus.

I wonder if a Death Cheese Bus would have made it better? And the heirarchy? I mean, at least you know where you stand in a heirarchy.