I recall slouching in my seat during Read-Aloud Class Time and being vicariously embarrassed that some of my classmates were hesitating over words like "which" and "the." No, I am not making that up.

One of my moments of quiet personal triumph in high school was being called upon, during the poetry unit, to read an e. e. cummings poem, and doing so smoothly and without stumbling over his odd line breaks and creative phrasing. When I had finished, there was a moment of quiet, and then my teacher asked me, a little hesitantly, if I'd seen the poem before. I hadn't. It made me feel Very Good and a tad smug.