Inexplicably Pivotal Moments

As I was riding Joanna around and around early this morning in the predawn haze where only Ojisans and Obasans were out doing their morning exercises, a memory came to me that often recurs. It is not just something that happens when I have been up all night cleaning (coming home from running yesterday, I left my door open. It was around midnight when I realized it. Leaving the door open all night in a subtropical climate is not something you want to do-- I discovered it was open because I noticed a strange influx of insects. Cue three hour cleaning spree...), it is a memory that repeats itself in my mind. Really, it is nothing. It is a memory in middle school--drama class of all places--and we are playing a game. A very common game but it was my first time to see it and I didn't know the rules. We sat in a circle and the teacher passed a book to the student next to him and said the book was open. Then the student passed the book to the next student and said the book was closed. This continued around the circle with each person passing the book and telling the adjacent person whether the book was open or closed. The teacher said whether the person was correct in their assertion or not. I watched this and was confused--sometimes the book was open and sometimes it was closed and the statements didn't always correspond with each other. I was watching because I was the only one in the class who had never played this game before and they let me sit the first round out. Of course you all know where this is going--everyone caught on rather quickly and I was the last person in the circle who didn't understand. You may have guessed this game; where the statement refers to another action that the person was doing and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the book. It was, in fact, whether or not the person's legs were open or closed. There was a moment where the teacher was trying to make it really obvious, and he crossed his legs very, well, theatrically, and squeezed them shut saying 'the book is completely, almost painfully closed...' and passed the book to me, but I just didn't get it. I knew, knew!, that it obviously wasn't about whether the book was actually physically closed or not but I couldn't get it out of my head that it still had something to do with the book: whether it was up or down, whether it was passed with the left or right hand...it just had to involve the book--after all, wasn't that what we were talking about? Finally, they just told me and then it was incredibly apparent. I felt dumb and I think the teacher understood because he told me it wasn't a bad thing at all that I didn't get it because I was listening to what they were saying so much it exhibited a certain guilelessness. This is one class, one moment in middle school and at the time it meant nothing. I didn't feel bad about the class or think too much about it; it just happened is all. Yet, I find myself visited by this moment over and over again because before this moment it had never ever occured to me that someone could be talking to me about one thing superficially but really mean to be talking about something else entirely. I understood lying--you could say something and be lying about it, I got that, but lying was still about what you were talking about. You could try to communicate something or you could try to not communicate something. All of my experience up to now had been that: it never occurred to me that you could be trying to communicate something else, something other than what you were saying. Why am I telling this story? Because it is a very simple moment, early in my life that has had an inexplicably huge impact on me. Most of these moments that make up who I am today are small, completely unremarkable moments that mainly happened during my early school years. Most of these where interactions with adults. This frightens me to death, because now I am going to be that person. I am going to have everyday interactions with developing people, which means I am going to have a hand in their development. I am not trying to be grandiose or make it sound like I am drunk on power--it is just the opposite. I am powerless in this situation because no matter what I do, it is going to make a difference. Some small moment that I will know nothing about and forget the next second is going to take on a whole new meaning in someone else's life. I will teach for roughly 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 21 days a month for an entire school year and at least one of those classes is probably going to be reflected on as much as I reflect on this class I had. This class that took away the last of my guilessness. The class that taught me I could trick someone into telling me about something else, that I could read someone to get information about them besides what we were talking about, that taught me I could manipulate people. After this, I never took anything at face value the way I did before. I don't know if I can handle that type of responsibility. It is beyond fucking something up--I have done that too; I have certainly fucked up in other people's lives before, as well as, occasionally, done something good in someone's life. But to not know when the test is or what it will mean to a person but to know it is there is daunting. Somehow more daunting when it means creating a facet of their future personality.