I have such bad memories, sitting in the back of a classroom, being told, you know, everybody is going to read a paragraph, and skipping ahead to my paragraph and being mortified and trying to read it enough times so that I wouldn't stutter and stammer, getting called on, even in high school.
“America had taken my father from me. And over most of the years of his illness, I gradually started feeling this support system from this country who-people grieving along with us.”