Pug Hill - Alison Pace [50]
“A Deity is a god or a goddess,” Beth Anne goes on to explain, and I’m pretty sure I knew that and I can’t help thinking, Come on we’re just afraid of speaking in public, we’re not idiots, we know what a Deity is. I look around at everyone staring blankly at Beth Anne. Or at least, I think we know.
“Think about your Deities over the week, but don’t pick them until next week, right before class, before you speak. When it comes to Deity selection, the best thing you can do, the way you can get the most power is to pick one at the very last moment,” Beth Anne explains, beaming, and though I have no idea about what, triumphant. I look around at my classmates. It seems no one else has much of an idea as to what she is really talking about, or why she is suddenly looking so triumphant. For this very moment we are not swimming in a vast sea of anxiety, we swim instead in a sea of blank stares. I imagine that in spite of the confusion, everyone welcomes the change.
“Though you mustn’t pick one yet, you can indeed think about them,” Beth Anne adds on assuredly. I steal another quick glance around the room. A few of them, Lindsay, and Lawrence in particular, do look like they are thinking about Deities. Everyone else’s expression seems to be as close an approximation as you can get to, You have got to be kidding me. Then, with the mysteries of the blackboard safely solved, Beth Anne reminds us that we should each pick a poem to present next time in class.
“It’s important, class, that you feel comfortable. Should you not feel comfortable reading a poem, please feel free to read a passage from your favorite book.”
Options are nice, I think, as Lawrence shakes his head from left to right and back again.
Beth Anne explains that if we start right away next time, we’ll all be able to fit in our poems. Then for the following two classes, we’ll need to split into groups to deliver our longer presentations.
“I’ll give the assignment for your longer presentations after we’ve completed our poems. I don’t want you to think about that yet, I don’t want to distract you from your first assignment,” she tells us as if we are all ADD children who simply can’t bear the thought of thinking of two things at once. Everyone looks happy though, and I wonder if maybe we are.
“Okay, but for the groups,” Beth Anne adds, “let’s figure that out now.”
We spend a lot longer than you would think would be necessary figuring out when everyone will present his or her longer speech in front of class. Everyone has ideas about whether they think going first is better, or last, or somewhere innocuous right in the middle.
“Such decisions,” Beth Anne explains, “cause anxiety, and we are all here to overcome anxiety rather than create more.” So, because of that I guess, I can’t think of another reason, we watch as Beth Anne rips a piece of Xerox paper into seven strips and writes something on each strip. She rolls each strip into a tight ball and places them all on the center of her desk. We take almost as long as that going up to her desk one by one and selecting one of the tightly crumpled balls of paper, all the while I still have the sensation that I have somehow gone back to childhood.
Once we are each back at our desks with our pieces of paper, Beth Anne says we can open them. Mine has a tiny 2 written in the center. I’ll go in the second group, not next class, or even the next one, but the one after that. I recrumple my piece of paper, thinking that there had to have been an easier way, and thinking also that I already know what poem I’ll read next time, my favorite one. I try not to think of the longer presentation, since for one thing, we’re not supposed to, and for another, we don’t know what it is anyway.
I look at my watch again, and it’s not like this class flew by the way time does when you’re having fun, but I’m actually surprised, and more than a little relieved, to