Disappearing Acts

The assembly, as every high school teacher knows, is really just one very long hour stuck in a hot, dark auditorium filled with teenagers waiting to do inappropriate things and act like animals. It is a Friday afternoon migraine lurking around the corner. It is a necessary evil. Yes, there might be skits or student-made videos or performances involved--anything to up the school spirit level. But mostly, the high school assembly is an hour spent in a hot, dark room with several thousand teenagers doing anything but acting in an appropriate, respecful manner. (And here you were thinking how annoying it is when you sit near a crowd of five of them at the megaplex--HA!)

Today was the Senior Assembly: photo slide shows were shown, "Most Likelies" (those supposed futures we adults know aren't very, well, likely) were announced, PROM royalty was flaunted. Oh, and then there was The Rapper Who Fell of the Stage.

You read that right.

One of our seniors with all the bravery he could muster, demonstrated his talents in "flow" up on the stage. Now, to give you some background knowledge here: The Spotlight, if ever you've been in its beam, is a painfully blinding device. I don't mean that figuratively. (But ooh what a good post that could be!) It is so blinding that you cannot see what is in front of you. You only see light. And so today this particular "gangsta" learned about spotlights and gravity. He missed that thin line where the stage ends and AIR begins. In an instant he had disappeared into the orchestra pit.

There.

Gone.

There.

WHUMP.



The microphone whacked against him?/the floor? And while the polite held their breath, we have to remember who the audience was here. Hint: multiply those five obnoxious teenagers by 300. Yes, laughter erupted as his voice croaked into the microphone from the depths of the pit "I'm ok. I'm ok."

In all the assemblies I've attended over the past few years of teaching, I have been waiting for such an event to occur. It was inevitable. Probably not the first time, nor will it be the last. And each and every time something like this happens it is, against our better judgment or sense of empathy, rather funny. Because I have a theory that somewhere in this world, at any given moment, someone is experiencing what feels like the most humiliating moment of their lives. That someone could be you. And in that moment of humiliation, rest assured, someone is laughing at you.