The Coward

Dramatis Personae*

• Trina, the one with an opinion
• A coward
• Vape-guy, narrator
• Audience, 100+ year 9 students, several teachers

*I’m in a Shakespeare kick right now, don’t worry about it.

***

‘Oh my god, her again. She’s always putting her hand up for everything. Who cares, put your hand down so we can get out of here. This guy’s been rattling on about drug use and making smart decisions for a whole hour. We get it, ‘drugs = bad - don’t do them’. He just said they’ve been banned anyways, what’s the point of him even coming out here.’

As I’m thinking this, suddenly the sessions over, he’s wrapping things up and Ms. Spencer is telling us we can leave by classes. My class is out first, but before we can get out, ‘Vape-guy’ walks over to Trina and stops her- and the rest of us- and starts talking.

‘Hay, you had your hand up before right? When I asked about refusal strategies, and how to help your friend and stuff?’ she nodded. ‘I saw your hand and just full-on ignored it’.

‘That’s okay, it happens, I figured you didn’t see me’. Don’t do that; he ignored you so we can get out of here, you know that.

‘It’s not okay though; I did see you and I chose not to pick your hand. I make assumptions when I’m talking and when only your hand went up, I assumed - from what I’ve seen at other schools and my own time at school - that you were the type to engage with your teachers and pay attention in class.’. She doesn’t get picked on, she stops us from leaving. ‘That type of person usually gets picked on for engaging, by other people too cowardly to do it themselves’

Okay ouch, she’s not brave for being annoying. The whole grade’s listening at this point, same as the teachers, but he’s not talking to any of us but Trina.

‘Problem is, that’s an assumption, and whatever other people might think, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have your opinion heard. I ignored that, and whatever great idea you had in the moment was lost to us. I wanted to let you know that powering on through my presentation was the wrong thing to do, and I’m sorry for ignoring you.’

Trina smiled when he said this - I’d never seen her smile before. She just said thank you and nodded, and we just got up and went back to class. The whole coward thing stayed with me though - it felt like in that moment he may as well have said my name, or stood me up and shamed me in front of everyone. I don’t know how anyone else felt, but I felt like an asshole.

***

Unfortunately, the reality could have gone better. When I was a teenager I was the coward judging people for raising their hands, and now I’m an adult teaching about the dangers of vapes and market deception. Today, I ignored “Trina's” hand and instead of hearing that girl's opinion, or apologising for ignoring it, I got on a train and wrote in the rain about how good I should have been. But ‘could haves’ don’t make the world brighter, and others continue their cowardice when we inspire them with our own. At a minimum, to those who remember being Trina (or perhaps currently are Trina), whose raised their hand and tried to get involved but been met with ignorance, I'm sorry. We’ve made asses of ourselves in our assumptions, and even when we don’t mean to, we’ve shut you down. Don’t let us get to you, and don’t stop raising your hand. When someone puts in the effort to actually listen, we all win, but that doesn’t happen without you having something to say. The next time I get a Trina in my classes, I’m hearing her out. I’d rather hear from Trinas’ then satisfy cowards.

***