There are those who were born to stand out from the crowd. These people possess immense leadership qualities and are at their very best when the spotlight is glaring down on them like a magnifying glass on an ant. I admire these people; sometimes, I confess, I even envy them. But I am not one of them. No, I have spent much of my life perfecting the art of blending into the background. So why on earth did I take speech in high school? The short answer is because I had to. But it was there in speech class of all places that I learned the number one rule of invisibility: never raise your hand.

Okay, so this is a rather obvious rule. I mean, all you have to do is watch Monty Python’s guide on “How Not to be Seen” to figure this out. Oddly enough, however, it was one that the teachers never seemed to learn. In speech class, the teacher was always asking us for volunteers. “Who wants to go next?” the teacher would ask in a voice that was entirely too chipper for what some of us shy students considered to be the last day of our lives. The teacher would let the room fall into an uncomfortable silence for a few moments while we all tried to avoid making eye-contact with her and prayed that some over-achiever would volunteer. After a few moments of silence, the teacher would play her trump card, her worst threat: “If nobody volunteers, I’m going to start calling on people.”

So really, the ace up the teacher’s sleeve was actually a four of hearts. I’ve never been to Vegas, but I feel like I can figure out these odds . . .

There were nine other students in the room. Thus, the odds of the teacher calling on me were only 10%. I know that this is not very complicated for most of you, but just in case there is a speech teacher reading this, I feel like I should spell things out. At 10% odds, if we just kept our hands down, we were all playing the same game of Russian roulette but with ten chambers. If I had raised my hand, the odds of me getting called on skyrocketed to 100%. This would be the equivalent of starting my own private game of Russian roulette with a single-shot blunderbuss. Really, the worst the teacher could do was call on us, but that was precisely what she would do if we raised our hands. The choice was obvious then, and it stays obvious now.

Years later, I went to law school. There, brilliant professors trained students with stratospheric GPAs to be successful advocates, judges, and BMW owners. And yet, the professors still used the same tactic, hoping to get us to answer by threatening to make us answer. I hate to harp on logic at law school, but that still doesn’t make sense.

I mean, how could it? It’s not like you’re going to go to a criminal line-up and say “Which of you committed the murder? Come on, if nobody confesses, I’m going to start calling on people.” Yeah, that’ll flush the villain out of hiding. Or what if we tried this on a hunting trip? “If no turkey volunteers to be shot, I’m going to start shooting at random turkeys.” If criminals and woodland animals are smart enough to see the flaw in this threat, why do we still try to use it on speech students?

Nevertheless, it generates pressure. And every once in a while, someone either caves into the pressure or nobly decides they will go ahead and take one for the team. This brave sap raises a timid hand and promptly gets shot. The teacher turns to the class, blunderbuss still smoking, and asks, “Any other volunteers?” Teachers, let me just clear this up once and for all: “No.”