Welcome to the Noosphere

Professor Drysdale likes class participation. He always has. He jumps at the slightest raised hand-- the tiniest flicker of the wrist excites him. He bounds across the front of the classroom, flipping his pencil in the air and cracking the knuckles of his long fingers against his thighs. When he talks his Adam's apple moves up and down and mesmerizes me from my front row seat.

I pay attention in class. I take notes. I don't lean back in my chair, I don't chew gum, and I don't talk to my neighbors.
I also don't contribute to discussions.
Drifting into senseless fantasies is perhaps one of my less obvious talents. I have dreamed up ridiculous visions in each of my classes. In more embarrassing scenarios they often involve characters in books that I have read, or in extreme cases, characters that I have created in my mind.
Needless to say, my talent is not obvious because I usually do not make it so.
It is an infallible principle; if the mouth never opens, nothing regrettable will ever come out.

And then my nose started to itch.

It began somewhere between a discussion about the Jonestown Massacre and the bystander intervention model. A tiny, creeping, pinprick of a nuisance entered my right nostril. At the time I believe I was thinking about horses-- Black Beauty to be exact-- and how fragile their ankles were. I thought about what it might feel like to be horse, and to have a bit placed in one's mouth and to pull a sleigh over white hills.
"Now, what would induce 38 people to simply..."
From the windows I could see the snow softly drift down to the Earth and muffle the grass in sparkling insulation. How sad to be a horse out in the snow! How sad to be a dead Ginger in the back of a cart!
"...brutally raped in murdered and not a single phone call to 9-1-1..."
I had cried while reading Black Beauty. I had found it undeniably saddening. All this long while my nose continued to itch. Without bothering to bring back my wandering mind, I casually reached up with my hand to brush the right side of my face (including the nose) and satisfy it all with a gentle scratch. As I lifted my hand, Mike Drysdale's exuberant voice permeated my reverie,
"Ah ha! Comment! What have you to say, Miss plaid scarf?"

I froze. I peered behind my left shoulder to stare at the girl who was not responding to the professor. I looked over my right shoulder and still saw no one in plaid. Then I looked down at the red and gray and black tied in a trendy little knot around my neck and looked up in horror to the front of the classroom.

"Um... nothing. No. Contribute. Not," I stammered. My voice squeaked and sounded unnaturally high.

"Very good!" said the professor, smacking his hands together and rubbing them warmly as he stared me down.
"I guess sometimes it's good to just raise your hand to say no," he said.

I closed my eyes and put my head down on the desk to dream about unicorns.