“Ms… Lancaster, correct?” the teacher scanned his role searching for my name. I nod silently. I can lie to you, but I can’t lie to the teacher.
A smile like the Cheshire cat spread across his face, and I knew I had made a grave mistake. No one should be that pleased to see a new student this early in the morning, especially when she’s late.
“Welcome to Current Events, Ms. Lancaster. I’m Mr. Sweat.” I can believe it. It has to be at least sixty five degrees in this classroom and the man is sweating worse than my last foster father after his daily marathon runs. “Now, I know it’s your first day, but you were late.” So that’s why he's smiling. He’s going to punish me. Death by public humiliation. “But I’m willing to let it go with a warning, but you’ll have to help me out with something.” Here it comes, Jenna. Accept your sentence with dignity. “You see, every Monday, we do this thing called ‘Soapbox Speeches’. I pull out a topic from this lovely bowl here.” He gestured to a clear fishbowl full of slips of white paper. “And the lucky person of my choosing gets to treat the rest of us to a beautiful impromptu speech. Sound fun?”
Not particularly. Sweat may be smiling, but I guarantee you he’s really Satan. Who does this to the new kid on her first day? But I nod anyways, forcing my feet to move towards the guillotine.
The podium stands dead center in the front of the room. Everyone can see me. Including you.  As I stand waiting for the blade that would cut my life short to fall, I scan the room looking anywhere but you. I can’t form a bond with you. I won’t. Meanwhile, I can feel your eyes looking nowhere but me. You’re curious about me, I can tell.
Sweat’s voice clears and I snap my mind back to the present focusing on the task at hand. Survival. Don’t draw attention. Get in and get out. Not hard.
“Okay, Ms. Lancaster, tell me how you feel about society’s control over today’s youth and how we, as the youngest generation, can change that.”
Youngest generation? The man has to be pushing fifty-five. I think he’s well past the youngest generation.
Finally focusing on my topic, I realize the irony in my assignment. Society had beaten me to a pulp by the time I was five. By telling my life’s story, I can easily pass this pop quiz of sorts. However, spilling my sob story to complete strangers, also doesn’t fit into my “unscathed and unharmed” plan. So I suppose it’s time to come up with plan B.
Luckily for stubborn present-me, eight grade-me took an improv class just for kicks. All I have to do is take my feeling and all of my “life’s knowledge” that I have supposedly gathered over time and mash it to come up with some climactic “great realization” to pass this. It’s easy, really.
If only that’s what I did. No. I just open my mouth and let the first thing that comes to mind fly out into the open. Because who needs a filter?
My speech goes as follows:
“While I do agree that there’s something seriously messed up about society, I think there’s something that we need to understand first. Society isn’t a person, or even a group of people. Society is every single person on this planet. You, me, everyone. We determine what’s important. I mean, even from the earliest days of life, we, humans in general I mean, allowed people, our leaders in society, to dictate what was deemed “cool”. We allowed celebrities, magazines, friends to tell us what mattered to us. While, in all honesty, what matters to you probably couldn’t mean less to me. And vice versa. Everyone here is unique in our own way, and telling us that one thing is cool doesn’t allow us to be ourselves. So, you see, the problem isn’t this all-powerful god that we’ve named Society. It’s us. Until we stop letting everyone tell us what to care about, nothing’s going to change. But once we become ourselves, I think you’ll see that society can fix itself.”
You can hear a pin drop in the classroom. No one speaks. Every single eye is on me. Your’s are the ones I can feel the most. I keep my eyes riveted to the floor and watch my feet to find the nearest seat. I can’t look at the teacher. I can’t look at anyone or anything but the floor. I sit at the closest empty seat and cover my face with my hands.
That wasn’t supposed to ever come out. Sure, I had thought about it a million times in my head, but I had never intended on sharing it. Now, an entire class knows exactly how my brain works and can pick at it to know exactly how to hurt me.
I finally look up and to the seat next to me. The one you sit in.
“Well, Lancaster,” you say under your breath, “Impressive.”