A Repeating (3)

We are stories that repeat themselves over and over again throughout our lives. I am a quiet person who doesn’t talk enough for most people but prefers to listen. The exception reveals itself when my mind is fully engaged in a study group or class.

I love this quote by Jack Kerouac:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

In everyday life, I fear saying commonplace things and boring interesting people. In a study group, however, I am mad to say things and mad to have someone come back at me with something else, so that I can respond. Once my mind is deeply engaged, my mouth follows. When I entered college at age 34, I discovered this situationally specific trait. My anthropology teacher asked me to stay after class one day so that she could admonish me not to contribute so much in class. Evidently, I was overwhelming the younger students and keeping them from participating. My face flamed with a familiar shame.

I belong to a small study group now, and I continually find myself talking too much, trying to talk over other people in my excitement about the subject; in short, being a real bore, self-absorbedly so. It is one of my repeating stories.

“I am seven years old, and my favorite number is seven!” she thought, skipping down the tall curb, across the narrow street and up the curb of the triangular city block that held one of her favorite parks. The coincidence of her age and her number made her happy.

It was a late spring day, warm, and the birds were chirping. Her long red-gold hair, held back in a tight ponytail, shone in the sunlight. She glanced at the old stone water fountain at one corner of the park as she passed, wondering if it was had been turned on yet for summer. But she couldn’t stop to see because she didn’t want to be late to school. The thought of being late sickened her stomach in fear. That fear reminded her of another fear, the fear of the disapproving look on her teacher’s face.

“I won’t raise my hand at all today,” she vowed. But she could never help it. When the teacher asked a question, she almost always knew the answer, and her arm shot up in the air, her hand waving frantically back and forth to catch the teacher’s attention. “Ask me, me, me!” her little white face pleaded, some of her freckles disappearing in the wrinkling of her nose. In the beginning of the year, the pleased smile of her teacher had always been there when she had known that George Washington was the first President or had recognized that the word chalked on the blackboard was “America.” When the teacher was happy with her, a warmth spread over the little girl’s face and her heart sang. But of late, the teacher didn’t want her responses.

“Give someone else a chance,” Mrs. Lally complained, frowning at the little girl’s frantic attempts to be noticed. And then the little girl’s little face flamed with shame.

Some of our repeating stories seem to be impervious to improvement.

(I am still trying to change this one thing about me, but some faults are deep as the deep blue sea in the core of who you are.)