Surprised.

Valerie Chang
November 8th, 2012

     Today, I was taken aback.
   
     Normally during an assembly at school, people have a very hard time staying quiet and giving respect to the speaker. There's always the spontaneous clapping that comes after every comment from the speaker, which may at first seem friendly but in fact it is a condescending mockery of the speaker. But today, during the Rachel's Challenge assembly, everyone stayed silent.
     The first part was when the speaker asked that we have a moment of silence for those who died in the Columbine High School Shooting--silence beckoned. Every day during the announcements no one can stay quiet for 40 seconds for the "moment of silence," but he asks that we pay our respects to those that passed on and everyone let the silence ring. At first, I was proud of that, but soon I was perplexed. The moment of silence every day is supposed to be to honor our country, America, and those in the army. Why can't we pay them some respect? I'm guilty of it though, so I'm just another hypocrite in the crowd.
     Then, everyone got emotional because of the touching story. I was glad to see the faces of everyone contort into a remorseful one--as sick as that sounds--because I wanted to see a different emotion other than laughter and anger coming from our student body. It's selfish I guess, but I just want to see the side of people that we don't get to see that much or even at all. But then it hit me. After the assembly, I heard comments and conversations about how so-and-so was tearing up or him-and-her were praying, but no one changed. Everything reverted back to the way it was. Logically, nothing was supposed to change immediately anyways, "It's a process" I told myself. But still, we all went back to class and became the people we really are, actors.
   That is really the human's best job. We act and lie and put on a show for everyone around us. Life is a constant performance of the fallacies that we deceive ourselves and others with. But I'll try to stay optimistic. I hope that everyone who raised their hands in the audience today is keeping the promise they made to themselves, to the speaker, and to Rachel Joy Scott.