The Victim

Every English class has one. He (and the victim is typically male) doesn't pay any less attention than anybody else, but, invariably, when there is silence, he is pegged as someone who isn't paying attention and gets called on, and which point he stumbles out a response and goes back to trying to hid from the teacher.

Last year, the victim was Richard. We had four demo teachers, but the problem didn't truly become evident until the third one, who singled him out, calling on him repeatedly, trying to get him to talk. When the fourth one came, he eventually asked a question that no one knew the answer to, and he looked out at the class for someone to answer it. "How about you?" he asked, looking at Richard. The entire class burst into laughter. The poor teacher was very confused.

This year, the victim is Lyle (I don't know if this helps, but he's friends with Jeff and isn't related to Lisa (Lisa is a famous person, not a nickname) and was in all of my core classes in eighth grade). I'm fairly certain that Ms. Seltzia has called on him while he wasn't raising his hand once per class this year. To contrast, I have yet to be called on while I'm not raising my hand. Usually, he says "can you repeat the question?" before managing a half-hearted response. Today, she had put our next essay assignment up on the projector.

"... polire- that's Latin. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing it right. Does anyone here take Latin?"

"Lyle does!" somebody said.

"Lyle?"

"Huh? Yes."

"How would you pronounce this?"

He squinted at the board. "What?"

"P-o-l-i-r-e."

He looked confused. "That's Latin?"

The class laughed.

"Yes. But how would you-"

Ariadne couldn't contain herself any longer. "It's Polire! You're right!"

Lyle nodded. "Yeah..."