“Listen buddy it’s alright it can happen to anyone,” she whispered in my ear as I continued sobbing into her arms. This had been one of the worst times in my childhood. All throughout elementary school I had been too timid to read aloud or show off the items in show and tell I had brought in. My mother knew this and wanted to help get rid of this fear. My school teacher, Ms. Jacobs, was informed about my issue and she said she was going to help resolve the ‘little’ problem, as she called it. The first time she had me speak out loud was to read one of my favorite stories, Jack and the beanstalk. Ms. Jacobs yanked me to the side and whispered,   

‘Are you ready?’ I felt as if I was screaming no but I couldn’t move my lips and just nodded my head yes. I sat back down and she called for story time. It felt like she had screamed my name when she called me up to read. I stood up and walked towards the front of the room. It felt as if I had been walking to the other side of the world. My knees trembled as I reached the front of the room and began reading. I murmured in a low, quiet tone,   

“O-once upon a time there lived a woodow woo-”   

‘It’s pronounced widow, Kas.’ It was like Ms. Jacobs wanted to embarrass me. My classmates started mocking me.   

“WOODOW! WOODOW! WOODOW!”   

All of a sudden it started to taste like the ocean water. I felt as if I had jumped in the ocean. My mouth was dry, and I felt as if there was rainfall and I was being drenched. All of a sudden everyone was staring at me, waiting for me to finish reading. It felt as if I had been standing up there for hours. I didn’t want to be a timid, shy kid. I wanted to be like my brother during family events. He would be making jokes and talking out loud to large groups of people. The whole family loved him and just saw me as the quiet little brother. I didn’t want to be that anymore. So, I gulped down my saliva and tried to keep on pushing forward. Soon it all got much easier. I ended up reading the whole story and Ms. Jacobs had concluded that I was cured of the ‘little’ problem. Little had I known that the problem was far from over. A few weeks later I was raising my hand to answer questions in class and it was amazing. I had truly felt ‘cured.’   

Then we had project to write our own story. I chose to write about the time that my family went on vacation to Disneyland in Orlando, Florida. It took me a couple of days, but I wrote my short story and included pictures. I was very proud of this story. It was my turn to share and I walked up with a huge chip on my shoulder. I looked at my friends as I darted past them.

“Ah-hem” I cleared my throat, took a deep breath and said with lots of confidence,   

“My story is about the time I meeted Mickey Mouse. I went to Florida with my family for vacation and we had a really big pool. This is a picture of the pool right here. And then next we   

went to blizzard beach. That’s a water park in Disneyland!” All of a sudden, I heard a loud noise coming from my stomach. I brushed it off and continued. “So next we went to magic kingdom and we saw a really big firework show.”    

“What did it sound like!” shouted one of my classmates,  

“BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!” I started to shout. I continued on. “BOOOOOOOO-” my sound was interrupted. PHHHHHHHRRRRRTTTTTT! The classroom filled with the disturbing noise. My face became a tomato and my classmates were holding their noses. I ran out the room sobbing… Ms. Jacobs had followed me and tried to calm me down. I was a mess. I just kept saying,

“I never want to read again. Why do you make me do this?”  

Mrs. Jacobs finally got me to calm down and go back to class. That’s when the real nightmare happened. I walked into the classroom and my classmates were not laughing or making teasing me. They were saying things to motivate me to try again.

I hated the fact that they felt sorry for me. It was pure embarrassment that fueled me to never want to read and write again. This was now the person I had become. I seldom read out loud. And when I did, it was because I was being graded on it. That day I had become diagnosed with that same ‘little’ problem.    

I didn’t care about writing and that made it harder to write papers. It took very long time to write a paper, but also, I would always have to revise and then rewrite it. If this problem hadn’t occurred, I wouldn’t have been a shy and timid person in middle school and it would’ve helped me become a better writer and most importantly a better person. The little problem of mine wasn’t that I was a terrible writer, it was that every time I would look back at a paper I would want it to be perfect and if it wasn’t, then it wasn’t good enough for me to read out loud. Thus, making it terrible in my eyes. I don’t know if anyone could help cure this little problem of mine, the problem of overthinking and letting people’s opinions affect me. Maybe that’s why I always conclude myself as a terrible writer.