I was a brand, spanking-new junior in a high school far from my former Yankee home. So new, in fact, that my parents hadn’t even moved down yet; I bunked with friends of my parents, previously unknown by me, so I could be present at the start of the new school year. Marveling at the slow drawls, Wranglers, and racial tensions around school, I’d now written my first pre-AP English paper. We’d circled our desks and traded papers with another student. The student—bless his heart, as they would say in the South—was actually remarkably kind to me, er, my paper.

My English teacher was not.