and of course the sprig of verbena -- verbena is a symbolic flower. you were expressing your passion for this passage. you said, you know, i've always wanted to lean down from my back stoop and pluck a sprig of verbena. you took this imaginary sprig of verbena to your nose and you went -- and i was mesmerized in that moment. i thought, oh, my gosh what is going on here? this is something i've never experienced before. it made a big impression on me. i remember everything from that year. i remember we also read john steinbecks "of mice and men" and there was a great moment in that classroom when i made apparently a terrible mistake. i'll let you talk in a moment. you called on me to diagram a sentence. i'd been transferred to your classroom from a school in florida. i didn't know what that meant. i ventured a guess and the whole class erupted in laughter. of course, i wanted to crawl under my chair, into a fetal curl and never come back out. and you had your back to the class at the time. and you whirled around and you looked at that class and you said