The place is a Lutheran Middle School in the midwest.

It is a small school, in a small town. This class is one of the largest, at sixteen.

The teacher is in her mid-thirties to mid-forties with bad coffee and ciggarette breath, who loved to intimidate unruly children and wear mirrored sunglasses.

The lesson is about parts of speech, nouns and verbs. It is the third grade.

One student is not getting the lesson, perpetually behind because he is slow. He does not understand the difference between a noun and a verb.

"Stand up, Paul. Stand up. Come up to the front of the class." she barked. She had started the day in a good mood.

Paul scuffled to the front of the class, his ears red with embarassment burning out from underneath his brown hair.

"Now do it, Paul. Do it! Act out a tree! Do it, Paul! DO IT! DO A TREE!" she said, mounting humiliation and scorn upon him.

Tears spilled down his cheeks and onto his shirt. They flowed like a river.

"You SAID its a verb, right? So do it! DO IT! DO A TREE, PAUL!" she said, openly mocking him.

Paul sobbed openly, embarassed by his stupidity. Embarassed to cry in front of the class. Embarassed at this open humiliation.

A brown haired, blue eyed boy sat in the class, and felt something in the pit of his stomach, like a heavy stone. This was not right.

The children sat silent and rigid. Scared. Scared of her.

"Okay, then, Paul, do a jump. Or a skip. Jump, Paul. JUMP." she barked, losing more and more of her patience the more tears fell.

Paul made a sound that was a mix of a sob and a bark, and flailed and flopped, doing something of a shuffle, thorougly confused and humiliated. His tears fell on the floor.

He did not jump or skip, nor understand the difference between a noun and a verb.

The teacher told Paul to sit down, and called someone else up to the front of the class to act out and demonstrate what a verb is, and what a noun is not.

Paul hung his head at his desk and cried, unresponsive.

The brown haired, blue eyed boy stared, and did not speak. He did not answer questions.   He usually answered questions.

The others answered, and kept the lesson going. Paul stopped crying.

Recess came, and we all went out to play.

And that brown haired, blue eyed boy?

That was me.