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messofcontradictions01 · 8 months

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What’s in their bag? -- Magic School Bus (aged up)

Arnold: A backup pair of glasses, a phone charger, a pack of tissues, a copy of the “National Geographic Pocket Guide to Rocks and Minerals”, a bottle of allergy medicine, a moleskin journal, a miniature watercolor of Phoebe sitting beside the lake (painted by Tim), a Tide stain pen, and his lucky jade rock.

Carlos: A book of dad jokes from the library, a soccer jersey that needs to be washed, a series of doodles done by Tim in AP Bio, a half-empty bottle of Gatorade, a months-old note from DA that he saved, a bag of Takis, and a Greendale Community College keychain.

Dorothy Ann: Approximately a dozen books, a Ravenclaw scarf, her color-coded weekly planner, a set of ballpoint pens, Doublemint gum, a thermos of black coffee, a key to the school’s chemistry lab, the solar system bracelet that Carlos gave her for their anniversary, and her library card.

Keesha: Warm vanilla sugar body spray, one scrunchie for every color of the rainbow, several copies of the Walkerville High Gazette to hand out, an annotated copy of “Hood Feminism”, her favorite ball-point pen, a photo strip that features the gang all trying squeeze into one photo booth at the mall, a flip-up notebook (in case she gets an idea for a newspaper article), a few loose pairs of brightly-colored plastic earrings, and a bag of granola clusters.

Phoebe: Animal shelter flyers, a bag of treats for her dog, a polaroid taken on her first date with Arnold, homemade vegan protein bars, a “Save The Bees” pin that was a gift from Tim’s grandpa, a pretty leaf she found on a walk, a skein of magenta yarn (to make into a pair of gloves for Keesha), her AP Environmental science textbook, citrus tea bags, and a backup pair of knee-high socks.

Ralphie: A football, a bag of Mallowblasters, a few baseball cards, a beat-up old copy of “The Fellowship of the Ring”, a History essay that was due last week, a stick of Old Spice deodorant, a few loose D20s, a crocheted hackysack (a gift from Phoebe), and a lightsaber keychain.

Tim: His sketchbook, a set of colored pencils, a half-complete issue of The Adventures of Weatherman, a thrifted Walkman cassette player with “Space Oddity” by David Bowie, a Black Lives Matter patch that he needs to ask Phoebe to stitch to his jean jacket, a Polaroid camera, notes for the next DND session, and a boba tea rewards card.

Wanda: A pocket knife, a box of skull-patterned band-aids, a roll of grip tape, a mixtape of 2000s pop-punk from Tim, a lighter (just for fun), bright red lipstick, several broken eyeliner pencils, a stabby cat keychain, an old ripped pair of fishnets, a plastic spider to prank Carlos with, and a water bottle full of Monster Energy drink.

#magic school bus #msb #cartoon #cartoons #arnold perlstein #carlos ramon #ralphie tennelli #phoebe terese #tim jamall #dorothy anne rourke #keesha franklin #wanda li

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lonelywretchjervistetch · 2 months

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Indulge me a moment, so I can finally get this in writing somewhere. Call it a writing prompt or creative exercise if you will/must.

It's been 23 years since Arnold Perlstein stepped foot here. It's honestly surreal. The floorboards of the school hallways creak a bit more than he remembers. And things look far smaller, as they would when you've last experienced a place when you were nearly 2 feet shorter. But some things remained the same. The smell, for instance. That odd mixture of old books and a summer coat of paint, with the occasional waft of perfume or...wood chips? Alright, maybe not everything was the same as when he was a kid, but Arnold would have to parse that mystery out later. He had a classroom to find.

Arnold had been surprised when he was offered the job at Walkerville. The school had expanded its class number since he was a kid, and was now a K-8 school. But Arnold was offered the 5th grade slot, when the kids started going to different teachers for their subjects. Whenever Arnold was asked by he wanted to become a science teacher, his answer always took him back here, to 4th grade. His classes were extremely engaging, fun...and for some reason caused him high amounts of anxiety occasionally. Still, he looked back on them fondly, especially the field trips. Although, he could never remember them in full detail for whatever reason. He usually chalked that up to childhood amnesia, though.

Arnold found his room, a newly built science lab and classroom where he would guide his students for the year through discovery! Exciting. As he opened the door, the smell of wood chips once again hit him. The source became immediately clear, as in the corner of the room near his desk, there was an enclosure containing...nothing. But the spread of wood chips on the floor leading from the case was immediately of concern. Quickly, Arnold shut the door behind him to prevent anything from escaping, and began searching the room.

The woodchip trail led from the cage to the desk, when some of the drawers appeared to be opened. Did this creature have opposable thumbs? Arnold's concern rose, as he distractedly passed by the colorfully wrapped package sitting on his chair. He followed the wood chips to a drawer labeled "Don's Delights", which was conspicuously empty, save for some spare wood chips scattered within. Who was Don? And why were his "delights" in this room? Distressing. Arnold continued his search, until coming upon a series of blocks, toys, and other items, stacked in decreasing size and leading up to a window. And there, at the top of the stack and hanging off the window handle, was a small brown rodent with a long tail and light brown stripes.

Arnold thought for a moment that this was a chinchilla, but the color was wrong, and it was way too small for that. The two looked at each other, frozen in an awkward moment. Arnold looked back at the aquarium in the corner, and caught the nametag "Don the Degu", along with a small display about this animal. But as he looked back, Don had jumped off the stack, and was running for it! Arnold had never been the most fit person in the world, but he managed to catch up to Don before he could squeeze beneath the supply closet door.

As Don stared at Arnold with big, wet brown eyes, knowing he was going back in the aquarium, Arnold looked back at him with a bit of pity. After all, who knows how long he'd been in the enclosure without food or water? "If I let you go, and give you some snacks, do you promise not to run away?" Arnold wasn't quite sure why he was talking to this animal in plain English, as if expecting to be understood. But he was even less sure of his grasp on the situation when the degu nodded at him in response. Weird, but...OK, Arnold thought, as he released his grip on the degu. Don climbed onto Arnold's shoulder and began grooming himself, then cast a glance that was clearly looking for Arnold to hold his end of the promise.

Arnold searched for the snacks in Don's Delights drawer, but couldn't find them. In response, Don hopped off of Arnold's shoulder, and led him to the desk. Arnold followed and opened a drawer that this...surprisingly intelligent rodent was pointing to, and found a bag labeled "Cheesy Treats", which Don dove for immediately. Tired from the events that has already taken place, Arnold sat in his teacher's chair for the first time, and finally saw the present sitting on his desk.

The box was wrapped in possibly the most wimsical and colorful wrapping paper Arnold had ever seen...yet somehow extremely familiar. It was decorated in stars, planets, asteroids and comets, various trappings of space. He wrote it off at first as a Dollar Store wrapping paper...until he picked it up. The planets were actually remarkably accurate, with Jupiter's Great Red Spot immediately drawing Arnold's focus. If he stared closely enough at it...it almost seemed to move and swirl around. But Arnold shook it off, relegating it to his imagination.

He cast his eyes towards the tag on the paper, which said only two words on it: "Take chances." Not like he hadn't done that already with this job. Again, Arnold hadn't applied for it, it was offered to him on great recommendation. But he wasn't even sure whom that recommendation was from. In previous schools, he'd been a little too ambitious with his curricula, using sometimes flashy demonstrations and high-budget experiments to get his students to learn and remember his lessons. This is what he remembered as a student himself, and large efforts on the part of his teachers got him to love science in the first place! But, that never made him the most popular teacher amongst administration. So, taking a recommendation from his old school on face value was a chance in and of itself. Still, Arnold noted it, and opened the small present.

Engraved on the box within the wrapping was yet another message: "Make mistakes." Again, not a concept Arnold was foreign to in his life. Not that he was a complete screw-up or anything, but he'd certainly changed his career prospects enough times to know about mistakes. His parents had wanted him to be something reliable, like an accountant. His cousin Janet was a big-shot lawyer in New York (which his aunt just loooooved to mention at any given opportunity). And he'd tried those things, amongst others. College was supposed to be a place to find yourself. Well, he did. A LOT. And all those versions of himself were...not him. Until coming upon science education, where he felt something click. The idea of spreading knowledge of the world around us and beyond, to change the world through changing forming minds...that was appealing to Arnold. After all, science was about making mistakes and learning from them. That was basically Arnold's whole adult life up to this point.

With his introspection done (and with Don having eaten an entire bag of treats, which probably wasn't great for him), Arnold opened the box. Inside was a tie, covered in stars and planets like the wrapping paper, and made of some very nice material. Perhaps most surprising of all to Arnold was how cold it was to the touch. The room was a normal temperature, but the box and the tie felt refrigerated. As he unfurled this gift, another produced itself: a key with a key fob. Arnold tried it on the desk, the supply closet, and any other keyhole he could find, to no avail. And when he pressed the fob, he couldn't hear or see anything change. But last of all was the message on the inside of the box: "Get messy." To which Arnold took this as a reminder to clean up the mess that Don had made. And so, distracting himself from the mysterious key, Arnold set to work cleaning the room and getting familiar with all of its features. School started in a few weeks, after all.

By the time Arnold was done with cleaning and inventory, and with convincing Don that he'd be back tomorrow, it had turned dark outside. Tired, he made his way to the parking lot, where he would get in his beat-up car and head home and watch something on Netflix. Maybe a documentary or that one TV series about the drug lord he'd been meaning to start. He reached into his pocket blindly and pressed the fob to unlock his car. But in the process, he heard a far-off horn honk, rather than the car right in front of him. Taking the key out of his pocket, he revealed his mysterious gift.

Arnold followed the sound of the horn to the back of the school lot. A stand of trees lined the entire parking lot, but Arnold followed the asphalt to find a pathway leading through it. But it was dark now, and possibly dangerous on its own, not to mention the idea of following a mysterious horn caused by a key given by someone you don't even know...Take chances, Arnold thought. Foolishly, he entered into the wood. It was louder than he thought it would be. Crickets and frogs peppered the night with their sounds, getting the last cries out before summer ended. Fireflies, too, danced around the wood, creating a beautiful-if-eerie atmosphere. And then...he saw it.

An old, yellow, rusted and broken down school bus. A school bus. Somebody had given him the key to a rusted-out school bus. But despite the absurdity of giving a teacher command of their own bus, nevertheless one that'd been retired in, like, 1997, Arnold was drawn to it for some reason. Why had he been given this key? Whose bus was this? And how could this broken-down junk heap respond to a modern key fob? He walked up to the bus, and the doors swung open for him. Knowing better than this...Arnold entered the bus anyway.

The inside of the bus appeared as broken down as the outside. This bus wasn't safe or operational by any standard, then or now. Still, it reminded Arnold of childhood, and he sat down in the seat. There, on the dashboard, his eye was drawn to another surprisingly modern flourish, a keyless start button. This was...impossible. And yet, Arnold surprisingly couldn't help himself. He pressed the button, to see if the old junk heap would start. But rather than the engine starting up...a message flashed on the dashboard in front of him. HANDS ON THE WHEEL, AND SEAT BELT ON, PLEASE! Enraptured by the insanity of this situation, Arnold put on his seatbelt, and put hands 10 and 2 on the steering wheel.

And that's when he remembered it. He remembered all of it.

Memories of field trips came flooding back to him. Impossible, whimsical, magical, TERRIFYING field trips re-entered his mind. Underwater volcanoes, flying through the clouds, traveling back in time, going to space...dying in space? So many beautiful and horrible things that he could now remember, enough to traumatize a child forever, and yet...all Arnold had now was true understanding. His love for science, his will to teach, all of it...his inspiration was these trips, which had somehow been altered by his mind into good and engaging teaching, instead of what it actually was: magic.

Realizing everything he'd forgotten, Arnold looked around at the bus: it was the same as it was when he was a kid, now. As if brand new, with a fresh bus smell, right out of the factory. With his memory restored, he quickly realized who gave him the key. "Ms. Frizzle.", he said out loud. And he was quickly met by a voice in return. "HelLO, Arnold! So very good to see you again!" Startled, Arnold looked up at the windshield, and the face of his old 4th grade teacher, Ms. Valerie Felicity Frizzle, appeared projected upon it. Arnold yelped and jumped in his seat in surprise, to which Ms. Frizzle chuckled a bit.

"Ms. Frizzle! What...how...why...what's happening? Am I going crazy? Is this...was this all real?"

"It was, Arnold. All of it! Every fantastic journey into the unknown, into discovery! All real. And all wonderful. And now that I'm retired, well...it's yours to discover now."

Arnold hadn't immediately noticed it, but Ms. Frizzle was obviously older. Her once frizzled orange hair was now a frazzled white, and prominent crows' nests and smile lines told the story of a life full of joy and excitement. After all, it'd been 23 years. And as Arnold's head was spinning from these thoughts and recovered memories, another quickly came to him. "...You sent the recommendation for me to work here? For ME? To get all of THIS? I used to be terrified of these trips! Why on EARTH would I be your choice for this?"

"Because I saw something special in all my students, Arnold, and I've kept track of you through the years! Through social media, not magic. Still, with every path and choice you've made, you've proved yourself to me to be the right person for the job. You've taken chances, you've made mistakes, and you've learned from them! Now, you can use those lessons to impart on others."

Arnold grew quiet. That had been his whole reason for teaching: to help the future generations learn about the world and themselves. "I'm not...agreeing to this yet. After all, like I said, those trips were terrifying. But...how does this whole magic bus thing work, exactly?" Ms. Frizzle smiles that old mischievous smile that Arnold remembered (and also remembered dreading).

It was time for another field trip.

#fanfiction #bad writing #help me #i've had this idea for YEARS #fucking years #you have no idea #anyway sorry about that #had to get it out #magic school bus #nostalgia #ms frizzle #arnold perlstein #writing prompt #somebody do this better than me please #writing

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