Ben's Presentation on the Battle of Tippecanoe

When Ben got up and started to walk to the front of the room, Tessa promptly and insistently offered to hold up Ben’s poster (as she had offered to almost all the presenters before Ben whether they were actually 2D or not). The conversation went something like this:
“Ben!” Tessa sits up straighter in her seat. “Do you need someone to hold your poster?” She asked, rather intensely.
“Uh, well, I sorta pictured myself holding the poster..like this,” He demonstrated. He looked back at Tessa.
She was silent. He looked back at his poster.
“’Cause I can hold it for you if you want.”
Ben looks at Tessa, then his poster.
“’Cause, you know, you might gesture or something.”
“Well, I guess..”
“Cool!” Tessa jumps up from her seat, grabs the poster from Ben, turns to display it to the class and smiles.
On the poster was some sort of sad and dark diorama of the battle, which seemed to be leaking sand. Ben immediately dove into his long and complicated explanation with all the abandon of someone doing a very broad brainstorm on breakfast foods. Ten minutes later I could only feel the sweet satisfaction of watching Tessa visibly start to regret volunteering for Ben as the poster slowly sagged lower and lower.
Ben’s rambling presentation lasted for a good fifteen minutes before suddenly, he slowly muttered off into silence, apparently to survey the class. Then, suddenly he turned to look Tessa, who was positioned with her arms braced against her stomach so they would support her head, which has fallen forward, her forehead leaned against the back of the hand which was holding the poster but floppily, so people on one side of the room couldn’t see the other side and vice versa.
He says, “Are you okay?”
She jerks, looks up, and says “What? Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah…”
Ben turns away then back to her. “Am I annoying you?” He asks in the middle of his presentation.
“No…” it sounds like a question.
Ben turns back to the room at large and looks at the half asleep class. “Am I annoying you guys?”
We all look at him, blankly.
“I feel like I’m being annoying.”
Jeff says, very gently, “No, Ben you’re not annoying us, why would you be?”
“I don’t know but I feel like I’m being annoying right now and I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
There are choruses of “No, Ben, you’re not being annoying.”
Ben apologizes self-deprecatingly for being so annoying.
This time most of the class nearly yells at him that he’s not annoying, several people putting in how he has to get back to his presentation.
He apologized a couple more times, but then suddenly I burst out laughing and nearly couldn’t contain myself enough to be at least respectful. I looked around through my tears of mirth and meet the gazes of Roop and Sasha, who subsequently started cracking up. Next, Calista fell victim to the utter ridiculousness of the situation and unfortunately I don’t remember anything else from the last 10 minutes of Ben’s presentation