In your own words

I still remember when my elementary school teacher asked me to retell, “in your own words,” the content of a text she had just read to us. I also remember the embarrassment I felt at that moment: I stayed silent for a while, then burst into tears. I confessed that I didn’t have any words of my own and could only use the same ones everyone else used. Of course, my kind teacher only meant to encourage me to express myself with the small vocabulary that, as a child, I could command.