Strait, in "The Parable, or a Very Subtle Joke

I.
In his younger and more vulnerable years Edward Y. Irving came across some advice which he had been turning over in his head ever since.
Whenever one feels like criticising anyone, went this axiom, just remember that all the people in the world haven't had the advantages that one has had. Quite right. But also remember, continues the wise king, that the people one is most likely to be dealing with, have in all probability had the same advantages, if not more, than have been offered to you. In fact, there is a good chance that they do not even appreciate the benefits which they have been given. And so, concluded the voice of the ancient bard, one must realise that all who is there in the world has a standard to which they must live; a consistent, universal code of morality, which creates a situation where everyone is answerable, accountable, and blameworthy, if only to their conscience. And whether that conscience is operable is yet another question altogether.
It must be remembered that the eternal cannot be found in the individual, but neither is it in the connection of existents which the great minds decry 'Society!' One's hive has no mind of its own; one cannot give up one's freedom to a queen bee and expect her to look after you. The orthodox debasement into communal ambiguity is thus assured.
Such philosophical truisms, however, did not cross Teddy's mind. He was, in fact, strongly concerned with other, much more important problems, such as that of Bus.
The public transport system is the hallmark of modern civilisation. While providing convenient, near-free transmission from one location to another, this great pillar of society supplies the individual with something more rewarding, if they know how to seek it. The bus is a neutral capsule, it does not judge too harshly those who request its transmissive services, nor does it require anything much more than a twofold coin fee for safe passage. And if you do happen to reach you destination somewhat on time and in sound physical state, on occasions, not as rarely as the Boatman would be willing, one is given the opportunity for redemption, release, return. All physical hells are temporary. Teddy hated the bus with a bitter passion. He was terrified.
He was on the bus, the Route 3 provided so graciously by the Government for exclusive student patronage, and Strait was bitching about how annoying the rest of the children on the bus were, with their incessant yelling, mindless projection of everything from food to jackets to schoolbags from one end of the bus to the other, and the crude mind games they played with pedestrians. These never seemed to give the kids the entertainment or satisfaction they so sorely sought, as they persisted unperturbedly in shouting obscene phrases, words or suggestions at unsuspecting victims; or holding sheets of paper to the window with mobile numbers written next to rudely scrawled pictures of genitalia; or ' Teddy's personal favourite ' drenching people, particularly cyclists as they rode alongside the vehicle, with water, or some other, less appealing liquid.

II.
The problem of Bus was embodied in the person of Strait, Teddy's silent comrade in commutation, who sat leaning against the window, his face buried in his arm in what can be described as a rudimentary attempt to imitate a pillow. At twenty past seven in the morning, it was far too early for Strait, whose eyes were bloodshot from apparent lack of sleep, coupled with excess coffee and stress. The last must surely have been caused by an overload of school work, Teddy deduced, since Strait's existence was one of the most carefree of all time, despite his many and varied commitments. Strait had no worries past getting to his violin lesson on time, finishing his Modern History homework, and attempting to help the College First Eleven soccer team to victory every Saturday (and only in terms two and three). If any distressing problem should ever have come Strait's way, there is no doubt that his solution would be to bury his head in his arm in a cheap imitation of a pillow, and feign an imitation of sleep, until the troublesome intrusion upon his life went quietly away of its own acquiescent accord.
After ten minutes of mutually taciturn commutation Strait finally declared, 'I hate those stupid kids. They're so annoying!' once again, just as he did every day. Of course, with Strait, things had to be said over and over: just for them to be said. That, and the fact that he even did speak at all was rather annoying to Teddy, who sat next to Strait as he was the least of many evils; the least annoying of everyone on the bus.
'Why do you hate them, Straitjacket?' Teddy asked, just to push Strait's buttons. Teddy knew that Strait hated having people disagree with what he saw as irrefutable truth, and for some reason he especially hated being called 'Straitjacket'. But as a group of people, Teddy couldn't stand them either, but they were a source of entertainment, and they were better than talking to Strait about soccer, or reading. The bus was like real-life TV; a person could sit there, and while some under-paid public servant drove them and forty other people to where they wanted to go, they could listen in on the conversations of any of their fellow commuters. Forty unscripted soap operas unfolding before one's very eyes; for the length of the journey, one could become them; see the world through their eyes. That was the mundane enchantment of the public transport system. It was a daily escape from the monotony of one's own life; for a moment, a person could break into the monotony of someone else's life, and experience a different sort of boringness; dull and lifeless, but vibrantly different at the same time.
'Look at them!' Strait would whine, snapping Teddy back to his reality. Teddy had long since come to the conclusion that Strait just liked whining for the sake of being heard. 'They're so annoying! Why don't they just sit down and be quiet? They're so loud!'
Actually, the kids were really annoying, but what was more annoying was that Teddy could by now in his experience with the great white beast known as the College recognize individual kids. Strait called them the Weiner Kids. They were younger than Strait and Teddy, who were Seniors, of the "generation, as it were, of the nouveau-techs; carrying around their College-issue laptops and forgetting how to write; usurping the more convenient, computer-equipped classrooms while Teddy was forced to trudge all over the College; and getting off a stop before him in the mornings to get to their conveniently located quarter; which all cumulated in him being generally pissed off at the loss of time in letting those little bastards off before him, a state of aggravation which failed to subside throughout the day. Teddy recognized most of them, and hated them for the same reasons Strait did, but liked arguing with Strait more, since it made time on the bus pass more quickly, before they eventually gave it up for dead. Once on the afternoon bus, shortly before Teddy began to boycott the afternoon school bus services due to the incessant lack of restraint displayed by everything and everyone on the bus, he had erupted with Nebuchadnezzan fury the Bayside Public Secondary School kids, whom Strait hated even more, but Teddy generally tolerated because of their anonymity in relation to him.
Teddy was amused to see Strait try to deflect the paper wasps being shot by the kids on the backwards side of the four-seater ' a grouping of two seats at the front of the standard public bus, where four people in a group could sit, two facing the back of the bus, the other two facing forward ' past Teddy and Strait, who were facing forwards, and into the crowd of kids in the back. Strait was yelling at the little shits not to fire these little paper projectiles towards him, while Teddy was having a grand laugh, when one of them hit him in the ear, causing him to, as Wiggles would have put it, 'swell up in rage,' shouting at the little bastards, and eventually, for once, winning against the stubborn pygmies. They had cowered for a bit, and began shooting away from them.
Strait had claimed the victory.
Teddy was again forced back to the immediate present by a blaring of car horns, as the bus swerved dangerously left into another lane at speed, narrowly missing several other vehicles, whose drivers were displeased at the bus driver's choice of route, to say the least.
'Jesus Christ, I'm going to die on one of these things one day,' Teddy scowled over the furious din of car horns and children, and began massaging the bridge of his nose nervously.
'Relax, Teddy,' Strait laughed genially. 'He's a bus driver. He knows what he's doing.' Teddy paused, leaving his hand on his face as he glanced sideways to check if Strait was joking. He wasn't.
'Straitjacket, in my younger and more vulnerable years I came across some advice which I have been turning over in my head ever since, and that that is possibly the most dangerous sentiment you can ever have about anybody, especially someone who drives for a living.' Teddy was able to raise his voice, over the clamorous din of the kids, and not be heard by the driver. 'Just because this guy's got a license saying he's able to drive one of these things, what does that mean? That doesn't tell me anything about the guy! I can't be confident with my life in his hands, just because some hack at the Roads department decided that this guy was qualified to drive. For all you know, this guy's going to smash us into a telegraph pole.'
'How do you figure that?' Strait asked.
'Why shouldn't he? You don't know anything about this driver. He's a stranger. He's an unknown, anonymous, oleaginous, bearded stranger who you trust enough to give authority over your life and death for thirty minutes a day. That is what's crazy, Straitjacket. And the sooner you understand that, the sooner you might start being a little bit safer.'
'You mean "paranoid, not safer,' Strait scoffed. Strait didn't like when Teddy began protesting the necessity of having to hand over his wellbeing to a stranger every time he caught public transport, because it made him realise that Teddy was a fearful, hateful person who probably didn't even trust himself.
'No, I mean safer,' Teddy insisted. 'And that's why when you get a bus, you treat the driver with respect, because you just don't know when he's going to snap. I mean, look at all these kids. They're loud, irritating, and distracting. If you can't stand them, how do you think the driver takes it? And he has to contend with traffic, as well! Frankly, from the driver's perspective, I'm not sure what you're complaining about. He's the one with the problems.'
'But they're coming up the back!' Strait gestured at where the kids were now sitting. 'Look, those two seats there are taken by Weiner Kids. Yesterday the seat next to this had them. They're taking over.'
'Christ, I'd rather have them up the back here than up the front where they're pissing off that driver,' Teddy pointed out. 'And if they're so annoying, then why don't you catch the other bus?' Teddy knew this to particularly inflame Strait. He never really got an answer to this, and couldn't answer it himself. Why not catch the other bus that ran exactly the same route no less than five minutes later?
'I've always caught this bus! They stole my bus! This bus used to be good.'
'When the bus was good, we were the ones who were making the noise. Remember when we sat down there and pointed out everyone who was listening to us? We pissed them off, and now the Weiner Kids piss us off.'
'But there's so many of them! There's like fifty!'
'There's ten, tops. Remember, it wasn't just us.' It was true, Teddy remembered that back in the day, they too had been among the multitudinous collections of children who found perverse pleasure in shouting obscenities at pedestrians from the behind the safety of the bus windows.
'There's still like a million more of the Weiner Kids than we ever had,' Strait changed the subject, then once more, 'and ' hey look, the Fat House.'
The aptly-named Fat House was by far the largest house either Strait or Teddy had ever seen. It was away from Victory Road, and had its own boulevard driveway, which ran between the other two not-so-fat mansions behind which it majestically stood. The driveway was lined by well-cultivated trees, and a small strip of finely-mown lawn ran up the middle.
The Fat House represented everything elegantly unnecessary about the excessively wealthy inhabitants of The Hill. It stood a mere three storeys, with a façade running a slight sixty metres on a north-south axis, facing out over the bay to the north, and to the ocean in the southeast, a thousand other mansions on The Hill in its overbearing shadow. Nobody knew who lived in the Fat House; everyone who bothered thinking about it assumed it was some Old Money bastard who had retired from the media industry, knocked down some lesser opulence, and had this manor constructed for himself.
Anyone wishing to catch a glimpse of that pinnacle of superfluity had to strain to see just some of it as the bus went past. Strait and Teddy made every effort to glimpse that pinnacle of superfluity each morning.
'Dammit, those stupid Weiner Kids are blocking the window. Move!' Strait shouted.
'Shut up,' Corvin suggested, concise and to the point, in his high-pitched tenor whine, as his friend, a smart alecky little punk named Adrian began snickering.
'I hate them,' repeated Strait, in his trademark scraping whinge. 'Their voices are so annoying!' By now, the bus was nearing the College Prep, after a journey of more than half an hour, and Teddy was getting aggravated as the bus pulled up at the Prep stop, no more than two hundred metres from his own. This was the worst time, this waiting so close to the destination without actually being there. He knew that while the kids scrambled around the bus trying to find their belongings, the overweight, irate driver cursing at them to hurry the hell off his bus before he lost his break at the end of the line, it would be quicker for Teddy to actually get off the bus, and make the rest of the trip on foot. But, Teddy thought, screw it, why bother? He was already there practically, and the Principle said not to cause any more trouble to an already fine or satisfactory situation than is necessary.
'Is it because Adrian's a better violinist than you?' Teddy casually asked Strait, knowing fully well the response to this, the oft-repeated dialogue that made the morning if not interesting then more bearable, by the presence of conversation.
'No!' came the response, as concise and to the point as Corvin had been a moment before, 'It's because he's annoying. At least I'm a good violinist. You suck at bagpipes. You've been playing for three years and you haven't even earned your kilt yet.'
It was true that Teddy, as his meagre contribution to the College's compulsory Wednesday afternoon Extra-Curricular activities program, was a member of the College's time-honoured pipes and drums band. Teddy, the Junior, had joined the band, back when he was keen and excited about the prospect of anything, had enjoyed it for all of six months and had regretted it ever since. However, he lacked the inspiration to actually see P. P. Partridge, the College's swarthy, formidable Extra-Curricular administrator and the only man who could get him out of the band and probably wouldn't even if asked, and so had remained there for five long agonising years of Wednesday afternoon parades and torment by children on power trips who once a year found themselves suddenly with rank and power over kids in younger years suddenly thrust irresponsibly upon them as their own elders graduated. Now, Teddy didn't give a shit about whether or not he stayed in the band, because there was nothing else to go into except cadets, the fatigue net which caught everyone who was not in another activity, and forced them to be child soldiers once a week, which was even worse, since it involved just the parade, and no music. Teddy had stopped caring about the bagpipes when it suddenly became clear that he was no good. Then, along with the others in the band who were no good, he had finally made a commitment to the band, which was to remain in it for as long as they weren't thrown out, and without doing any real work, including attempting to earn the higher honours of a kilt and further uniform responsibilities, other than turning up to the weekly lessons with the crazy old man named Jimmy who still thought corporal punishment was legal and who got them out of whatever period each Tuesday they didn't feel like going to.
'I'm getting my kilt on Wednesday, alright?' Teddy laughed at the simple lie. It had been what he'd said last Wednesday, and the Wednesday before that. The difference between Teddy and Strait was that Teddy simply didn't give a damn. Adrian probably was a better violinist than Strait, and chances were, Corvin, who was also in the band, was a better piper than Teddy. The difference was, Strait cared about his music and Teddy didn't give a shit; but he did care that Corvin was a better piper, if only for the smugness they showed when they knew they were better than him, like they thought he tried and failed in some competition with them: after all, it was the Principle.

III.
'Hey, how come I never get the window seat?' Teddy asked suddenly.
'Because I always get on first,' came the mechanical, bored reply.
'And your cricket bag takes up too much space.'
'Well don't sit here then.'
'Where else could I sit?'
'I dunno, with the Weiner Kids?' Strait leaned out from his arm long enough to wearily indicate the turbid mass of screaming children.
'Why would I want to sit with them?'
'You might get a window seat.'
'But I'd rather have a window seat and deprive you of it at the same time.'
'But you'll never get the window seat.'
'I can try.'
'You'll fail every time.'
'But maybe one day I'll get it. Anyway, in the aisle seat I can get off before you.'
'Why would I want to get off first?'
'You always seem to want to get on first.'
'That's different. I get the window seat this way.'
'Even if you got on third or fourth, you'd still get a window seat.'
'No I wouldn't. You'd get it, and I'd have to sit in the shitty aisle seat.' Strait laughed, coming out of the shell created by his arms, and sitting up somewhat.
'What's so good about having the window seat?' Teddy persisted.
'If you don't know, why do you want it?'
'To deprive you of it.'
'So if I didn't want the window seat, you wouldn't want it?'
'Of course I would.'
'Why?'
'Because it's the window seat.'
'What's so good about the window seat, then?' Strait repeated Teddy's question. By now, Teddy knew he'd won, by turning his loss around.
'If you don't know, why do you want to keep it?'
'Because it has, um, perceived value.'
'But not actual value.'
'No, of course not; it's a seat, for Chrissake.'
'Don't say Christ, he's not your Lord.'
'He's not your's either,' Strait retorted.
'I don't have a Lord. And just because the window seat has no actual value, that won't stop me trying to get it.'
'But you never will, so why don't you give up?'
'Because if I can keep trying for something I want, which will end up spiting you, I will, even if I never get it; I might.'
'But you said before you didn't want the window seat.'
'I don't. I want you, or anyone else, not to have it.'
'So you'd be happy if it was empty.'
'No that's stupid; someone would have to sit in it.'
'And I suppose that someone would have to be you?'
'Of course; I'm the only person that can. If anyone else sits there, I'm obligated to try and get the seat until it is vacated. Then someone has to sit there, otherwise it's completely stupid to have wasted resources. It's the Principle. That someone has to be me.'
This was the problem of Bus. Beginning the day, and thence ending it some six hours later, Bus characterised the complete and utter lack of real enthusiasm Teddy had for anything. What was more, any enjoyment was derived from the annoyance of others, be it through the use of cruel logic, or the crueller lack of it. Like the Weiner Kids whose pleasure came from drawn genitalia flashed at motorists, the mischievous pleasures of the mind gave way to no actual happiness, but only a sense of empty space where the missing emotion should have been found.
'And that's the Principle, is it?' Strait asked, breaking mercilessly into Teddy's reverie.
'No, but it comes damned close to explaining it.'
'Well, what is the Principle?' he insisted. Teddy sighed, pitying Strait's naivety.
'Straitjacket,' Teddy explained patiently, 'if you have to ask, you obviously don't know.' And then he got out of his aisle seat, and left the bus first. It was the first day of term. Teddy was terrified.