But I 39-m. Cheerleader -

I mean: you see a skirt. I see armor.

Because the but was a lie. The but suggested that my real self was hiding behind the pompoms, that the skirts and the chants were a distraction from the actual me: the reader, the debater, the future lawyer. But here is the secret I have learned, standing on the sideline of my own life: but i 39-m. cheerleader

I didn’t mention my three-inch binder of sources. Instead, I said: “But I’m a cheerleader.” I mean: you see a skirt

It took a philosophy professor—of all people—to cure me. We were discussing performative utterance, the idea that saying something makes it so. I raised my hand and gave an example from the football field: a cheerleader shouts “Defense!” and suddenly thirty thousand people are stomping in unison. The professor smiled and said, “That’s not performative. That’s magic.” The but suggested that my real self was