The ultimate challenge: Silence

Let’s just make one thing absolutely crystal clear: No one in my 15 years has ever called me talkative. And yet when I faced the challenge of not talking for one day, I crashed and burned into a sorry little mess of sentient and audible ashes. 

I thought the challenge would be a piece of cake. On a daily basis, I talk more than I want to, and I thought I’d enjoy my ironclad excuse for avoiding small talk. On the night before my experiment, I whipped out a red ink pen and scrawled on my left hand, “I can’t talk today. Social experiment for newspaper” and basked in my own confidence. 

I chose Wednesday for my experiment since there are fewer hours of school, fewer people would ask “Why can’t you talk?” More importantly, I do not have Mr. Nguyen’s English 10 on Wednesdays, where participation is graded on a curve. (Grades over newspaper, right?) 

Sadly, my expectations took a nosedive when I woke up panicked at 8 a.m. and I realized that I hadn’t finished my Trigonometry Precalculus honors homework yet. Since I couldn’t talk to anyone, I wouldn’t be able to ask anyone for clarification on the assignment. I also remembered it was my turn to explain a homework problem in math class, and I still needed participation points from Spanish.

“Oh shoot,” I muttered under my breath — and then freaked out again. Two words. Did they count? I hadn’t said them to anyone else … sighing, I marked two lines on my hand, one for each word, and headed off to breakfast. My goal was to stay under 100 words, I reminded myself. I hadn’t lost yet. 

Those hundred words chipped away at lightning speed, though. In the next 10 minutes, I added another nine words to my total by accidentally talking to my mom. The green tallies on my hand started to smudge against each other, and I considered starting my word count over. After all, I still needed participation points in math and Spanish, and those 11 words didn’t matter yet because I hadn’t gone to school.

I counted them anyway, telling myself I wouldn’t need to talk at all during newspaper. Ironically, that class — the one where I thought everyone would understand my predicament — comprised the hardest 90 minutes of my day. 

“Hey Ashley, what’s up?” greeted sophomore Shreya Tumu as I walked in the room. 

I nodded awkwardly and sat down in the computer beside her.

“Can you quiz me on history?” she said.

I gave her an apologetic look and started working on one of my stories. Typing into my browser, I wrote, “Can’t talk today. Newspaper story” since all that was left of the message on my hand were illegible ink smudges. She continued to talk to me, but became increasingly frustrated because I couldn’t say, “I know” in response to her or share any of my thoughts with her. 

Shortly afterwards, Mr. Tyler decided to take attendance, so I sat down in my seat next to Life co-editor, junior Amy Lin. 

“How’s your story going?” she asked.

I smiled.

“It’s your day, huh?” Amy said, and turned around to talk to someone else. I felt so isolated in my self-imposed exile into silence. 

Worst of all, I couldn’t complete any interviewing for any stories that day because interviewing, unfortunately, requires talking. Despite my carefully constructed efforts, this challenge (which I had devised for myself) was starting to inhibit my daily life in some major ways. 

By fifth-period math, I felt like my thoughts were going to hurricane out of my mouth into one angry rant. Without words, I couldn’t do anything. While everyone else huddled around discussing one problem, I pretended to be interested in my world history homework.

Finally, I surrendered in math class when explaining my homework problem to the class. I didn’t count the number of words in my explanation and fell back into regular chatter during lunch. I had failed my challenge, but strangely it didn’t bother me. Instead, it showed me just how much I talked every day — and how precious little phrases like “I know” can be in holding a conversation.