i.
After school Wednesday, I started getting a sore throat. By the time Hip-Hop class had rolled around, I couldn’t speak very long without pain. I woke up Thursday, yesterday, and decided I’d better stay home from school, since it had gotten worse. I e-mailed my teachers, and did what homework I could. Today I woke up still worse, but I remembered what one of my teachers last year told me about the problems that you run into from missing more than one day of school in a row, and figured I’d try to put up with it. I could barely say three syllables in a row, but I brought I notepad and pencil and wrote things on it that I wanted to say. I asked my teachers not to call on me, but I figured out during my first class that I could write answers to questions in large letters on the notepad and the teachers could read it. I still asked them not to call on me directly, though. At the end of my fourth class, my teacher handed me a note saying to go to the main office after that class. I did, and was told that my dad would be picking me up during the last class of the day for a doctor’s appointment. However, I could feel my throat about to start really hurting, so I asked the office lady to call my dad and ask him to come get me immediately, so she did and he did. When I finally saw the doctor, he told me I had pharyngitis, and probably Strepp Throat too.
ii.
“Katargeo” is Ancient Greek for “to render powerless.” I spent most of one afternoon looking for the name for “fear of powerlessness” on Google, and because the only thing I could find was in someone’s sig on a message board*, I figured I should try finding an English< -->Ancient Greek translator instead. I typed “powerless” into the one I found, and “katargeo” is what I found. Hence, I decided that the term for my issue is katargeophobia. I assume it would mean “fear of being rendered powerless,” but I don’t know that for sure.
Anyone who knows me can tell you that I find it hard to keep my mouth shut. So when I developed an inabilty to talk for any length of time, I felt somewhat powerless. I compensated for this by forcing myself to say short things, and the notepad helped too. I temporarily regain the ability to speak after drinking tea with a substantial amount of honey in it, but the last time it didn’t last nearly as long as before. And I can’t get tea that easily in school anyway.
iii.
In school today I was trying to come up with a joke about losing one’s voice and disenfranchisement, but I couldn’t think of any that were actually funny. The only joke about that subject I know of that comes close to being funny is in America: The Book. In the unit on the voting system, one of the unit activities at the end is “Disenfranchise a Black student”
But anyway.
Apparently that worked its way into my subconcious, and I have since been accepted as a moderator on http://www.ratemyteacher.com, I have printed out ten pages with a total of 190** uses of
http://www.landmarkcases.org/tinker/home.html
Know your rights!
That web site is about the Supreme Court case that decided that students have Freedom of Speech in school. I plan on distributing these cutouts around the school, next to the lockers, on some of the bulletin boards, and in the classrooms where civics classes are taught and clubs that have governmental associations are held. I’ve been researching my mother’s infamous lawsuit, known as “Lipp v. Morris,” and finding some interesting webpages about student’s rights. I suppose on some level I want to make sure I still have a figurative voice, even if I don’t have a literal voice.
addendum.
*Speaking of message boards, I discovered a site through a Google search on my name where someone praised me greatly. I applied to it, but I haven’t heard back yet. Although, I might have been rejected for the sole reason that I said “the Rule of Three is c**p.”
**(Yeah, I know, weird number. I accidentally changed font size halfway through without realizing it.)