Yes, I knew Ariel Castro, the Cleveland monster who kidnapped and held captive three young women in his home for 10 miserable years.

He was my bus driver for two years when I lived in Cleveland and I was attending first and second grade at Woodland Hills Elementary School. He picked me up for school in the morning in the mustard yellow school bus and dropped me off after school each day, right in front of my red brick home, the one with a mechanic’s garage in the back yard.

I remember him as a funny guy who used to crack corny jokes about us riding The Magic Schoolbus with him as the driver. I also remember a sign on his bus that said something like “Get to school, you’ll survive, then nap time.” I never knew what to make of the sign.

Little did I know that he would later kidnap three girls, rape them repeatedly, imprison them in his home, have a child with one of them, and do unimaginably horrible things to all three of the women, over and over, for a gruesome decade.

I shudder to think of how close I came to that monster on a daily basis for two years. It could have been me.

After learning this year that my former bus driver was a convicted rapist and kidnapper, I made a few changes in my life. I am somewhat afraid of riding a bus now, and I have promised myself that I will never be the last one off the bus again. I’d rather get off the bus a stop ahead of mine and walk instead of being the last one dropped off.

When I heard that Castro hung himself in prison – one month after being convicted of his crimes – I concluded that he was a coward. He tortured his three captives for 10 years and now he couldn’t stand up to the years he was supposed to serve in prison.

He was facing life in prison, plus 1,000 years, for his atrocities.

Basically, he took the cowardly way out, getting off his own Magic School Bus more than 1,000 years before his designated stop. A true coward.

 Paige Hall is a staff writer for The Southfield Jay and a member of the school choir and the school’s WSHJ adio station staff.