Going Through a Much Rougher Spell

I read a quote not long ago that really stuck with me. I'm sure I'd heard it before, but this time I guess it just hit me right. It's from Faulkner -- and you have to admit, that's a lot classier than quoting, I don't know, "Stripes" or something.

The quote is, "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." I find that to be particularly true for the parts of our past (or my past) that didn't play out the way we wished the first time around. While I have little enough imagination that I occasionally repeat myself... I find that I have already made a couple of previous references to something that happened to me a mere 36 years ago. So at least that part of my past certainly isn't past, but I'm really hoping that another 36 years will do it.

I'm going to just close my eyes and plunge into this. When I was in 6th grade, I represented my elementary school in the city-wide spelling bee. At that time I viewed myself as a budding genius, always in heated competition with Bridget Witbeck to determine which of us was the smartest in the class (of course it's completely possible someone else entirely was actually the smartest, but we were clearly the two most successful students). And while I must admit I have learned the limits of my not necessarily gargantuan intellect, one thing at which I have always been really excellent is spelling. Couple a fanaticism for reading with a just slightly obsessive-compulsive personality and what you end up with is a decent speller.

While I was nervous about performing, I was fairly confident that I would do well, and I started strong enough... I guess. While I must've won the school-wide contest to get there, and must've gotten something right once I did, I can remember absolutely none of that. I do, however, recall with Technicolor clarity the immensity of my eventual failure.

I've been willing over the life of this blog to humiliate myself a bit here and there in the pursuit of a laugh or a lesson, but all I'm willing to say is that it was a word I knew well but for some reason it didn't sound right to me. Somehow I couldn't make sense out of it and... well, if the contest had been for coming the farthest from the correct spelling, I would've had a decent shot. I'm just hoping that I will understand and/or come to terms with it before I die (the good news is, it's only been 36 years so far).

When I heard that our local library was co-sponsoring a spelling bee for adults, my heart leapt. I thought it sounded fun, I believed I had a shot at winning -- and I sensed an opportunity to undo one of my life's disappointments. I steeled myself ahead of time against the possibility of losing, but I promised myself I would not lose on a word I knew.

Arriving at the library at the specified time, I figured I might be in the wrong place: there were maybe a dozen people in an auditorium that seats 140. I quickly identified my principal rival, a tall, gray-haired woman who looked like one of those people who's always carrying around a big thick book in a sensible tote bag. I was soon to find that in our entire "metropolitan" area, there were only eight souls brave/geeky enough to show up for a spelling bee.

They lined us up in the front row, and I ended up quite by accident in the "coveted" lead-off position. Each of us stood in turn, got a word, had to repeat it and then spell it. The first round was clean, but two bombed the second round and three crashed & burned the second time around -- so there were three of us left. The first three rounds, with my words in bold and the misspelled words in italics:

cumulative, acoustics, precipice, blasphemous, sophisticated, tuberculosis, vaudeville, stenographer, affiliated, decadence, grimace, furlough, clientele, overwrought, conglomerate, silhouette, harangue, scuttlebutt, vociferous, symbiosis, bailiwick, toxicologist.

I was frankly a little surprised that the words weren't harder -- although I was thrilled to note that I knew how to spell all of them.

I kicked off the fourth round with facilitate; I noted that the middle of the word was a little tricky with alternating vowels/consonants, so I carefully negotiated it and made ready to sit down... only to hear, "I'm sorry, that's incorrect." The moderator said, "it's f-a-c"; I looked at him in complete shock and said, "That's what I said!" He replied, "No, you said f-e-c". I looked around and people were nodding -- yup, you said "f-e-c".

I was completely dumbfounded. As I said later, I would have testified in court that I said f-a-c. All I can think is that I was concentrating so hard on the middle of the word that I wasn't paying attention to what I said at the beginning and just misspoke.

The competition went on: facilitate (F-A-C-I-L-I-T-A-T-E), derelict, ikebana (both remaining contestants got this one wrong), fledgling, epidermis. The winner: the tall, gray-haired woman. I was appalled to note that I actually knew how to spell every single word in the entire contest, and still finished third.

I think, however, I might have cheerfully finished last (well, OK, maybe not last) -- if I had only met my single, solitary stated objective for the day. But of course, in making that my focus, I probably made it inevitable that I would lose focus on the words themselves.

What I can say for nearly certain is that in about 11 1/2 months -- or only 37 years from the original precipitating event -- I will be back in the same auditorium to try it again. In fact, I may just plant my sleeping bag in the hallway now.