Hard to come by

When I was in eighth grade, I was deep into my socialistic, borderline communist phase, replete with not standing for the pledge of allegiance and taking the hassling with the ACLU in my back pocket.
My dad had a copy of Mao's little red book and I brought it to school and I remember discussing the contents in a social studies class and then someone stole it, ah the irony, even then it was not lost on me.
At some point in that same classroom, there was a day of role playing and I was designated to be a Chinese peasant which was, as far as I was concerned more than fine; I was in my element, discussing the revolution and what it had meant for millions, as if I knew anything about anything.
Mr. Berry seemed to be a well liked teacher at the school, he had the requisite 70's shaggy hair and was down with us young folk. But, in retrospect I realize he didn't like being challenged in any sort of intellectual or meaningful way, and during the "role playing" I felt legitimized enough to actually let loose and provide the logical and somewhat beyond the level of an classroom argument of my belief system. During a heated discussion with what should have been a student but ended up being the teacher, Mr. Berry was yelling at me and ended up calling me a "pig" and then after about five seconds added the word peasant. It hit me like a brick and I reflect on the physicality of it now and remember not breathing for awhile because I was scared that if I did, I would begin to cry. There was a stunned silence in the room and perhaps that was a good thing, that we all were in some way affected by his loss of control, and that the enormity of the humiliation was not lost on these generally pretty awful kids. My friend Tenna, leaned into me and asked if I was okay, and right there the spell was broken. Without that question, I may have had to harbor that experience alone but what she did was take me out of the solitude of the experience and make it one that was shared.