Learning to keep my mouth shut

I spent Saturday trapped in a classroom with twenty other people. For eight hours, the rain poured down, the atmosphere gloomy enough for Eeyore to off himself and I'd been trying to liven things up during question/answer time with what I thought were entertaining comments. Until the last one.

Instructor: (to class) You've got be able to reach the point where you're comfortable taking risks..... a little like Lady Gaga. She lives on the edge.

Me: Of glory?

Chick next to me: *high five*

Instructor: See me after class.

Me: CRAP

In my defense, she just wanted to talk about something else, but I will admit I spent the last 45 min of class terrified I was going to get an F just for trying to be funny. There was a brief mention of how she'd noticed in the last class that I used humor as a defense mechanism and that during this particular class period, it was very obvious. Apparently, I am frigging transparent because she's not the first person to freak me out with that observation.

But she wasn't upset. She said it was okay. But, that she was curious as to why it was so very present in my character.

Eh?

Um.

And then she stared at me, which made me uncomfortable because I was sort of hoping it was a rhetorical question.

So I smiled, shrugged and told her that I was mildly retarded.

She frowned.

I made it better, though, by telling her that I had a younger sister who was retarded so it was okay for me to use that term. She frowned harder, so I explained that my sister was dead, so really my sister couldn't be offended that I used her as an example and not to worry. Then I just got real with the teacher and explained that when I get nervous, all kinds of crap just comes out of my mouth and usually it's a train wreck and everyone wishes they were somewhere else. Especially me. Can you imagine how it is for me? I mean, being on the receiving end you can just walk away and be all like, that was weird. I probably won't talk to her again. But I can't exactly walk away from myself.

Well, I did walk with something from class that day. It was a referral to the school counselor.

Probably because they could use some help filing or something.