I first saw the attack on the news.  Then I went to YouTube for the truth. It was not censored. It was not edited for TV. The faces were not blurred out.  It was a school bus in Florida, just like the one I ride five days a week. I’m thirteen just like the boy who got beaten, stomped, and broken by three older boys on that bus. I saw things about them and those who cheered that no one on TV would say. I saw the reports of the beat down on three different networks: CNN, NBC, and ABC. CNN and NBC were blaming the senior citizen bus driver for not stopping the beat down. They did not blame the boys who did the attack. The boys were arrested, charged as juveniles and released that same day. I feel so much safer now. The law really showed them a thing or two, as my grandpa used to say.

I wanted to bring this up during Topic Tuesday in my Social Studies class but my teacher said it wasn’t a good idea. When I asked her why, she just stared at me for a few seconds and then whispered, “We don’t want to cause anyone to feel bad.”  I may be a kid but I knew what she meant. I knew what we are not supposed to talk about but I didn’t care.  I reminded her that we talked about Trayvon Martin for days, and the school even gave us excused absences to participate in the Justice for Trayvon march.  She just stared at me again. I told her I would avoid their race and just talk about how they didn’t care about the crowd of witnesses, the adult driving the bus and screaming into his radio, the bus video cameras and the cell phone cameras that recorded the entire attack. She said, “I’m saying no for your own good.” I believed her.

I’m not trying to start a race argument. It’s not about that but I want to know. I am thirteen and I have white skin and blue eyes. If I was on that bus and was attacked too, would anyone care? Would anyone march for me? Would anyone stand up on Topic Tuesday and tell my story? Will CNN even mention my name? They didn’t for this boy. 

Why won’t adults see that something is horribly wrong? I saw on CNN that if the bus driver fought those boys he could have been fired, and sued by the attackers’ parents. They said teachers have the same fear and a lot of kids know this. My mom once said, “I bet you can’t wait to be an adult.”

From here being an adult doesn’t seem so good. Not if you are afraid of children. Not if you are afraid to speak the whole truth. Not if you are divided. But what do I know. I’m just a kid.