Wordplay

I'm kinda awkward. I know it. We all know it. But that awkwardness probably stems from the fact that I don't know how to talk to strangers or a crowd of people that numbers above six. Don't tell me to take a stand and make an argument, when I'd much rather wax poetic. Because when it comes to making a point, I usually can't. Rambling - it's what I'm good at!

In my ethics class, we always meet all together, and some speaker will come in and present us with dilemmas and then the entire classroom will discuss what to do. Or rather, five very outgoing people in our class will make their arguments, and the other forty-five of us will sit there and nod our heads appreciatively when someone makes a good point.

My biggest fear is that one day I might get called on.

Thankfully that didn't happen today.

After our large class discussion, we break up into designated small groups for more focused discussion. There are twelve students in my group. Which is apparently the magic number for things to all go to hell, because there has not been a single time when I've been able to say something succinctly without ending on "so umm, yeah, you know?"

"So umm, yeah, you know?" is probably not a good way to get people to see your point.

Today we had a discussion about quality of life. And lots of people mentioned family and having fun with your friends and enjoying activities and having the ability to actually go out and do stuff and blah blah blah. It was all good stuff. Someone was talking about how dance is so important to them, and how if they lost the ability to dance, it would be devastating to them. And then, I felt the need to participate. Mind you, I wasn't called on or anything. I could have kept nodding my head if I wanted. But something moved me to participate.

Hey, guys - do you remember that one ethics activity we did, where we described our perfect child?

They didn't.

Oh, well...maybe it was just in my group. Well, we wrote down everything we wanted for our children. Ten toes. Ten fingers. Blue eyes. Tall. Athletic. Gregarious. And so on and so forth.

Still blank stares.

You know...and then we had to determine how many of those things we could take away before we decided we didn't want that child anymore. Before we would abort the baby instead. And we realized that the one thing we wanted for our children was happiness and joy. Who cares if they don't have ten toes or ten fingers? We just wanted them to be happy. Of course, there's that one callous person in my group who wanted his daughter to be drop-dead gorgeous or have the fetus aborted --

Here, someone stifled a laugh. Whether it was at me or at my terrible attempt of a joke, I don't know. Anyways, I decided to wrap it up.

But we just want our children to be happy. So um, yeah...you know?

Blank looks still. Actually, no, the looks were all, what the heck is she talking about? Looks that were all totally warranted, because I don't think I made my point very well. Which is that we defined quality of life for our children as joy and happiness. So why should it be any different for us? Who cares if we can no longer move around or whatever? We didn't care if our kids had ten toes or none at all, as long as they were happy, we clearly thought they should be born. As long as we're happy, I think our quality of life is pretty good.

Someone else piped up then with something completely different, and discussion and attention moved away from me, thank goodness.

Sometimes I feel like a complete idiot. And this is probably why I don't pipe up in discussion all that often. Because I don't feel I can make compelling arguments, even though I know that technically, at the root of the matter, my stories do make sense and my points are good.

(Man, even that last sentence was awfully wordy.)

But seriously, I don't know what's wrong with me. I get all self-conscious, and it probably doesn't help that only one person in my small group talks to me outside of class.