The Bus Symbol in Start Without Me: Isolation, Transition, and Freedom

The Bus as a Threshold Object in Start Without Me

In Gary Janetti's memoir Start Without Me, the bus appears as a recurring, seemingly ordinary object that carries outsized emotional weight. It is never a vehicle of adventure or escape in the way a cruise ship is; instead, it is the mundane machinery of daily life in Queens—the camp bus, the school bus, the Q76 route home. Yet the bus becomes a charged symbol precisely because it marks the moments when Janetti feels most trapped and, paradoxically, most free. From the hidden bus pass that buys him a summer of solitude to the empty Q76 ride after high school graduation, the bus tracks his evolving relationship with isolation, transition, and the possibility of a life beyond the one he is living.

The Literal Bus: A Vehicle of Routine and Resistance

In the memoir, buses are public transit lines that connect Janetti's childhood neighborhood in Flushing to the institutions he is forced to attend. The first bus appears in the opening chapter, when at age seven he is sent to day camp. The bus takes him and other children to a local park, a journey he describes as feeling as distant as South Dakota, even though it is only minutes away. The bus is the physical container of his discomfort: it delivers him to a world of orange drinks, organized games, and other children he cannot relate to.

The bus pass itself becomes a tangible token of that obligation. At age eight, on the first day of camp, Janetti hides his bus pass in a jar of peanut butter, a small act of sabotage that allows him to stay home and watch television in the basement. The pass is the key to the bus, and the bus is the key to the camp; by hiding it, he severs the chain of obligation. His mother's frantic search and his feigned innocence turn the bus pass into a symbol of his resistance to a world that expects him to socialize, play, and be a normal child.

The second major bus appears in the final chapter,