The Assignment

Class time would be over in five minutes. The writing assignment she gave her students that day was to write a story that included either the line “I don’t belong here” or the line “Don’t mind me.” It didn’t sound all that difficult, she thought. Short lines, from a personal perspective. Around a thousand words, unless the response was a poem, in which case the student would need to talk it over with her.

After everyone had left the classroom, however, the Professor began to wonder if anybody would notice the reason for juxtaposing the two lines in a single assignment. It might have been deliberate, or perhaps merely random. She knew she was probably overthinking it, but that was typical for her. Overthinking. She’d been born that way.

This was what she was thinking: Would the students see the options as either/ or, as indicating they should choose one of the two lines for their essays? Or, alternatively, would students find a way to connect the options, to make them work together in an essay? In the end, the discussion among them, in class, was the real goal.

Years later:

Organizing and downsizing takes on a different meaning after a certain age. Still, it has to be done. The process gets slower and heavier, in proportion to the years and experiences. Save only the vital, the essential.

The Professor sighed, but her body language, including her facial expression, wasn’t resigned. She had been going through a box of old papers from classes and stumbled upon the very 3 x 5 index card she’d used to jot down the homework for the next class. When she saw the card, she realized why she always remembered giving that assignment, because the discussions it had provoked were ones that had overflowed the classroom time into a local café or a Friday beer. They began to take on a life of their own, and several students still circulated prompts. She knew this through social media.

The Professor recalled how she had created that specific assignment from a community writing group online prompt because (to be honest) she wanted to write about it herself. She also wanted to write along with her students. She always enjoyed their minds, enjoyed helping them develop, as prosaic as that sounds nowadays.

The Professor sighed again then, in part because she was no longer at the university, those days were in the past, she was supposedly doing different things now, was busy, more or less content with things. But she hadn’t forgotten. So she had stopped the culling of material in order to think about why that single thing stood out in her mind.

Which is why she decided she would give the exact same assignment to a phantom class, in part because she really just wanted to do, or redo, the homework herself. She thought it could be interesting to respond nearly forty years later - kind of like a letter to her New Professor self from one whose life no longer revolved around that island. Since there were no longer any students, the only essay she would be reading was her own. Rather than seeing that fact as something sad, though, she saw her condition as quite fortunate, no matter what she wrote in the end. She had waited her whole career to become a writer, to escape from the delicious trap that working as a Professor of Writing had been. Now she would try to be Writer.

The Professor Does the Assignment 40 Years Later:

“I don’t belong here”. I have thought I belonged to a few places, not too many, but they were taken from me, or I never made up my mind to stay. Afraid of permanence? Afraid of never escaping? Avoiding thoughts of “final resting place” because I could never face the Nameless. For thirty years I lived in a place I didn’t belong, and that place was in a bigger place where I didn’t belong, but I survived. Funny how far away that “here” seems now.

“I don’t belong here”. An added meaning. I don’t belong in this body that has not given up but it’s becoming an uphill battle. I don’t belong here where I’m not dancing to cumbia or salsa, improving my Spanish. I don’t belong where I walk less than before, where my body seems slow to heal, where there’s nobody to dance with now. I don’t belong here, reading all the time like I used to wish I could do, and still too aware that the “here” is the space I inhabit but it doesn’t seem like it’s mine any more.

“I don’t belong here” in a neighborhood without friends, a town without friends, a state without friends, a country without friends. I need to know what I’m doing here, without friends.

“Don’t mind me.” Right. I’m still apologizing even as I can’t help doing the thing I’m apologizing for: writing and talking. I read in nineteenth century novels about how women should be seen and not heard. I lived the years of progress and now the return of the Handmaid and her tale is slowly killing me. Please. Don’t mind me. I tend to get nervous when I’m too assertive and then I get embarrassed and start to sound stupid. Like now.

“Don’t mind me.” I didn’t mean to offend you by anything I said. I didn’t think before I just gave my opinion. Ignore me. It’s safer that way. For all of us. But wait.

Forget that “Don’t mind me” attitude. I’m not getting out of anybody’s way now, not if I’m certain I’m on the right path. I’m tired of being bullied and angry that I was too stupid to know what was happening. From now on it’s going to be “Mind me.” I don’t have a lot of time to catch up on lost time, so I’m not going to stand off to one side and raise my hand to get called on.

I’m pretty sure the two phrases (I don’t belong here; Don’t mind me) are closely linked in my case. I never belonged anywhere except one place, and that place fell apart. I could belong somewhere except it would require a lot of effort. The same amount of effort as staying here where I live but don’t belong, maybe. The phrase “I don’t belong here” could be hopeful, though, couldn’t it? Like “belong” is the same as “don’t deserve to”. I deserve better, that is. Or, I don’t deserve this great place I’m in.

“Don’t mind me.” Now that gets curiouser and curiouser. It seems to have stopped being a term of erasure and has the armor of an affirmation via irony. In plain English: Mind me, pay attention, listen to me.

Evaluator of Assignment:

The writing shows thought went into it, but the arguments aren’t as well developed as they could be.

Professor, you are allowed to repeat the essay if you like. Clearly you have more to say.