I need help finding the theme for this essay. The essay is: Letters trip over each other as they race to leave my mouth. My tongue lines them up in order as they march ot the microphone:

A-S-

I am almost alone on the stage.

One lastkid sags with his head

in his hands. He is mouthing each letter as I say it:

C-E-N-

The hours I have spent on the floor of my room with books in my lap like wounded birds and cramping wrists now seem worth it:

D-A-

There are lists of words scribbled in my cursive and spelled out in my parents' print

on top of dictionaries and thesauruses:

N-C-Y

There is applause and I smile.

I shake the seventh-grade boy's hand and whisper, "I'll meet you back here next year for a rematch."

A-S-C-E-N-D-A-N-C-Y.