Speak up or shut up

Ed Villarreal
How about no

If you can believe it, I lived most of my life as a painfully shy and innocent boy. My mother, equally as introverted at the time, was constantly upset that she passed on her timidity onto me. I would let people walk all over me and go home crying to her. Her face would turn red and she would snap, "Eduardo! God gave you a voice. Use it!"

I think the worst part of being so scared to talk was the fact that I would believe all the hurtful things people would say to my face. My junior year of high school, I wanted to take an advanced chemistry class but first needed the teacher's permission. This teacher had no heart. He would tease the not-so-bright students by saying "duh" to them while they tried conjuring up answers to his questions.

The man actually spoke to one of the obviously gay students with a faux-feminine voice and lisp while he waved a limp wrist in the air. When I asked him for a seat in his advanced level class, he looked at me with a deliciously evil grin and said, "There is no way I'll let you take my class. You will never amount to anything in your life and I do not want to waste my time."

I'll have you know, there was no way he was going to get the last word of that conversation. I looked him right in his eyes and said, "Oh, OK," and walked away. Not only did I let a poor excuse of an educator talk to me like that, I believed him as well.

At the time, silence and acceptance were much easier than saying what he needed to hear: "Look, Mr. So-And-So. The fact is I am more than qualified to take your class. And if you don't believe that I will do anything with my life besides counting nuts and bolts for eight hours a day in a factory (which is a job I actually had after high school), I will see you again after I get my first big paycheck so I can staple it to your forehead as a reminder of your ignorance."

I have very few major regrets in my life, but to this day I am angry that I never stood up for myself and my fellow abused students. He knew who would keep quiet and treated them as if they were subhuman.

Then, one day, I found myself opening up to one of my coworkers, a woman whom I had written off many times as a simpleton. I discovered that her words may have been small, but her wisdom was anything but. She took the same tone that Mom gets when I make this way too complex and said, "Ed, in this life, you are constantly faced with two choices: take it or leave it. If you decide to leave it and change things, good for you. If you decide to take it, whatever. That's your choice. But when you make that choice, shut up!"

I don't think she understood how much her advice would impact me. I will never forget her words or the look on her face. Thank you, Tina.

It hasn't been easy, but since then, I have taken many leaps from my tail-between-the-legs days. I somehow made it out of the closet. I stood up for myself at work when my sexual orientation became an issue. I decided to take my ACT and apply to school at the age of twenty-four. I had to deal with a debilitating chemical imbalance. And, in one of my proudest moments, I decided to be an openly gay writer for the Daily Egyptian. I hope these prove as payments enough to my mother and Tina.

This idea of expression has been part of my writings all semester. I feel like our world perpetually becomes more and more complacent with each passing moment. We settle for "good enough" and let the rest slide by. This is an end to progress.

I constantly see people being held down based solely on their color, sexual orientation, size or intellect. Too many times, they let it happen while bystanders turn the other way while thinking to themselves "Well, whatever. What can I do?" In the words of my friend Julia, "Uh . . . stop!"

This could potentially be my last column for the DE. I would like to end this with some last pieces of advice, but I think my mother and Tina summed it all up for me already: speak up or shut up.

I hope you all enjoy a much-needed break. If you don't hear from me again, take care of yourselves without hesitation, and be good to each other. And if anyone tries making you do otherwise, stand tall and look them in the eye while you say with a huge smirk on your face, "How about...no."

How about no appears every Tuesday. Ed is a junior in speech pathology. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Egyptian.

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