Sunflowers & Speaking Up

When I think of speaking up I don’t always think of choice or opportunity. I think of force. I do not arrive to speaking up but it arrives to me. It moves in like a wind I cannot stop. I can choose to either go with the wind or I am pushed down by it. It flattens me to the ground and I lay there unable to move.

Flattening is what normally happens, perhaps not like a giant gust of wind, but like an oversized anvil falling from the sky. I am flattened beneath it in the same way the wicked witch from the wizard of Oz was by Dorothy’s falling house.

My earliest memory of the anvil was when it zeroed in on my location in my second-grade classroom. This time, my classmates were the tiny dancing people, but they did not sing songs of joy.

We played the teacher's chosen game. Music sounded in the background as she randomly went through the classroom asking students to spell vocabulary words from her auspicious list.

She called on me, giving the anvil my location. I heard ringing in my ears as it whistled quickly through the sky. I would be completely flattened in moments.

I spoke to the spelling of the first word and failed. Sweet relief I thought, let me stay here under the pressure of this anvil while you others continue with this game.

I thought, how was it a game if the result was my forever flattening?

That first flattening was not enough for my teacher. She called on me again and I again failed. It was not enough for her to simply step on the bug. She had to keep her toe on me, smearing my remains into the earth until I was no longer recognizable as a human form.

And just when I thought I could become no flatter, she chose me again.

I spoke right this time. I believe maybe the spelling word was sunflower.

I don’t really like sunflowers and I don’t really like games. I especially don’t like speaking up.

When I speak up I think of my second-grade teacher who wore the horrible polyester dresses and I think of the multitude of wrong answers that find their way to me.