EXCERPTS FROM MY LIFE//HSHS ANNOUNCEMENTS
[It’s the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break and a young Ratha is barely late to his chemistry class.]
I arrive as the bell rings and Jake points at me, nominating me to go do the announcements. I try to downplay it but then others in the class agreed with Jake that I should do it. I’m nervous and I don’t want to do them, but by this time Mrs. Fetzer needed somebody quick so she told me to put my book bag down and head to the front office. During the duration of the announcements I kept asking the front office lady how to pronounce these weird-ass last names and she keeps looking at me like I’m the crazy one. To me, I have four letters in my last name so how do you expect me to pronounce these long last names with letters that shouldn’t even go directly after one another. Anyways after, I might have fucked up the pledge of allegiance once or twice, but before I hung up the phone, I wished everybody a very safe and positive Thanksgiving break. I hang up and the lady tells me to wait in the front office for the principal. I stay but the principal is "too busy" so she tells me to go to class. As I’m walking back I see Rhamel skipping and he told me he laughed at my announcements. I didn’t know whether to feel embarrassed or to take it as a compliment, so I dapped him up and walked into class. Immediately, Mrs. Fetzer took me outside and said that I’d never do announcements again. She lectures me for 5 minutes saying that I embarrassed her for choosing me, but in my mind, I didn’t even want to do it, I was forced, so I just told her that it wasn’t my fault I didn’t know how to pronounce certain last names. Later that day during lunch people kept telling me they liked my announcements, and instead of saying thank you, I just said that I liked them too, because I did. I thought my Thanksgiving message was kind and nobody had ever done that before. Eventually I got wrote up for "purposely" ruining the announcements and spent a day in after school detention. It’s 3:59 am and I don’t know why I thought of this, but it’s been 5 years and I still don’t know what I did wrong.