Panic
By Conner Peterson
“So, kids!” the--likely first or second grade--teacher said, somehow conjuring up excitement in her voice after dealing with us terrible and cruel children. She walked over to the whiteboard, wrote a mathematical equation, then looked at us. “Can anybody tell me…” And that is roughly the moment when I stopped paying attention. Instead I honed in on one exact drawing on the whiteboard: a random stick figure with very weak dragons flying around it drawn in black colored permanent marker. You have probably seen pieces similar to it before, so you can guess that it was bad. I was the one who had drawn it.
Unlike the sight of that stick figure, which suddenly became a tad bit more acute, sounds began to deaden around me. The side-talking suddenly became nearly silent (though you can never truly block out the sound of sidetalking, I’ve learned), and the teacher became more than just nearly silent, which I think establishes my priorities. I sat like that for around a minute, which felt a bit more like an eternity, then snapped back to reality. The sounds became the normal volume (far too loud). “So, children, can anybody tell me what the answer is?” the teacher asked, gesturing to the whiteboard, which had some alien equations on it. This was like Arrival, that movie I never watched with Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams, directed by Denis Villenueve, the guy who directed Dune. Had aliens made contact? Why were we, children, decoding the alien speech?
I looked closer, and saw it read 4x3. My god, my younger and dumber brain thought. Is this what algebra is? What did I miss?! Kids hands shot up quickly, leaving me thinking, What? The other kids aren’t stupid! This is a massive revelation!
“9!” a child shouted. The teacher looked at them, a hint of exasperation on the teacher's face.
“No,” the teacher said bluntly. “Anybody else?” Friendliness leaked back into their voice, seeming to whisper something along the lines of, “Children…answer the question. Raise your hands.” And I was slightly tempted, then remembered I didn’t know what looked to be algebra. The teacher scanned around, then found a child. She pointed.
“12,” another child said. The teacher smiled, and made a slight clapping gesture, which I can only assume was pity for everybody else. Something to say, “My oh my, this is the only smart child in my class. Well, time to only pay attention to that child for the rest of the entire school year. Wow, I deserve a pat on the back for my immense teaching skill.” That’s how I interpret it nowadays, at least. Perhaps it was closer to, “Oh good. There are children who know how to do math,” in the most monotone way possible.
“Oh no,” I whispered to myself, as if those words would alert the teacher of my ignorance. Afterall, what was I to do? Raise my hand and tell the teacher I was (apparently dumb is ableist in this case (I disagree but, whatever. So let’s say) reserved? Ridicul--actually, that wasn’t a bad idea. What a great and easy-to-execute idea! I raised my hand high. The teacher turned to me, and looked surprised, as if me participating was truly the most shocking thing in the world. I didn’t participate much, and if you were to scan through my PEP’s, you’d notice a certain trend. Something that says, “I want to participate more in class.” Unfortunately, PEP goals are very similar to New Years Resolutions. You make them, vowing to go to the gym every day. Then, the next day, you’re eating unhealthy chips while rewatching the Big Bang Theory, trying to figure out why the audience seems to believe that Sheldon sitting down on his chair is truly the funniest thing to ever happen in the history of humanity.
“Conner,” the teacher said. I was confident in my abilities to speak some English. I knew that I would ask this exact question: “What does any of this mean, teacher?” Then they would answer me, and I would be so proud and… Why was everyone staring at me? Oh no…this is bad. Their eyes were glued to me in a metaphorical sense, because in a literal sense that would be…concerning. I could feel sweat dripping, coming down like a metaphorical waterfall. (Once again, a non-metaphorical wave would be deeply concerning, and medically marvelous.) I’d probably find my way into a textbook though, which might be a positive thing. Everything was so very loud all of a sudden. The sound of pencils writing on paper, and desks. The sound of sidetalking.
“Yeah, my mom said--”
“Yeah, so I killed--”
“I hate--”
“No, I murdered my dad. My mom didn’t do anything. I framed her, since she–”
“No, I wasn’t going to stab him. I had nothing to do with that toaster--”
It was overwhelming, and terrible, and too many people were admitting to murder (because that was not a random false touch to inject some fun into this relatively drab story. That definitely actually happened, just trust me) and I wanted it to all stop. Just ask the question, right? Well, yeah. Unfortunately, my brain didn’t seem to be thinking that. Instead, it was thinking, “Oh my god! Everybody will laugh at me!” That was a strange thought, as I have just established that everybody was sidetalking. How can they sidetalk and laugh at me for my incompetence? God knows, and due to my lack of belief, that means that, to me at least, nobody knows. That isn’t a nice thought, the idea that nobody knows the answer to something. They work and work and work and work, only to say, “Yeah…I’m clueless. Totally clueless.” Suddenly, a thought occurred to me. If my hand being raised was the source of my sudden crippling social anxiety, perhaps I could just lower my hand and it would all go away.
“Conner?” she said, sounding concerned, though I feel as though there was also a level of, “I expected this.” This is when it occurred to me that everybody realized I was a buffoon, and therefore my social image was forever ruined and in an irreparable state. Things can just spiral like that, I suppose. “Conner, did you have something you wanted to say?”
I lowered my hand, and muttered in a near silent voice, “No.”
We must wonder how this affected Conner--and that happens to be me, so I should have a unique insight into this. To me, it shows me where I was, how I have progressed, and even where I still need to progress. Do I raise my hand nowadays? Well, the answer is sometimes, but, and I don’t feel very proud or happy writing this, more often I will not raise my hand. Something still just says that unless I am one-thousand percent sure that I am correct, I should not raise my hand, which is kind of counterintuitive, I think. What purpose does it serve to ask a question if I know the answer, then hold back a question that is a genuine question, which is probably a good one, and even if it is a bad one, there is still value in asking the question. And you know what, nobody is sitting there with their phone out, VoiceMemos app open, waiting for you to slip up. Well, there’s probably nobody doing that. You can never be sure.
Speaking up is important to my identity because… Well, I don’t know if it is a big part of my identity in a way that I can just point to one of the Big Eight Identities. I don’t think I can just go, “Yes, this greatly impacts my socio-economic status.” Because I know that that is a lie, and I think that generally lying to finish a school project is bad, often looking like, “Yes, well this story is…very real, yes. I didn’t make it up just today, I definitely experienced this in real life.” I think Interstellar set the bar at ninety-percent. The Big Eight Identities are important to be sure, but they’re just eight parts of infinitely complex identities. You can’t define one's courage, or their intelligence, because they’re incredibly complex things, beyond being a male or female, or a man or woman or none of the above, or all of the above, or the dozens of other genders that exist. But to me, speaking up is still big for my identity, because it shows that people do progress over time, rather than being stuck in a moment, always having the same beliefs, ignorant to the change happening around you. Might not be the answer that is the goal for this project, but it’s what you’ll get, because I think it’s what's honest, because I can’t say, “Yeah, speaking up is when I suddenly realized that I am a straight, able-bodied, white male.” I don’t think there are too many moments in life that you can point to as major identity shifting moments, though they certainly do exist (realizing the person you love is actually a cat, or being thrown violently from a car that decimates your legs and hands, etc.). I think it is more subtle than that, most times. Life does not scream into your face. Life gently pushes you, and you have to hope it’s not off a cliff.
