The Spelling Bee

If my family reads this post, I'm sure they're salivating over what they expect to read here - I'll get to my sixth grade spelling bee a little later - for now, a happier time, and a happier story.

Due to all the reading I did (see "The Flower"), I was a pretty good speller. I only remember one spelling bee in first grade - and this is a story about that event.

Schools used to prepare you for the real world a little better than they do now. If you failed, you knew it and so did everybody else. We moved all the desks to the side, and sat down on the floor one behind the other. You stood up to spell your word and success meant sitting back down in your spot. A misspelled word meant the walk of shame. You had to walk past all the sitting kids and watch the rest of the bee from your desk. I did not want to lose, and fortune was on my side.

Three people were left, I remember one of them was Brent Blair, I don't remember number two, and I was the third. We were all spelling the easy words alright, and I think that either the teachers were tired of the bee, or we were coming up on lunch or recess, so they decided to pull out the tricky words. Much to my delight, they pulled out the word "alphabet" -- "How could that be good news?", you might ask?.

Flashback --

Earlier in the week, I was in the library and saw a word that I thought was spelled wrong, so I asked about it. It was elephant. I asked Mr. Dunkley about it, and he educated me about the wonders of the "ph" combination making the "f" sound - as an aside, he mentioned that "alphabet" was another word that was spelled that way.

Unflashback --

I won.

It's funny, how fate and a serendipitous conversation with a librarian can change how others view you and how you view yourself. If it hadn't been for this shot of confidence, there may not even be a sixth grade spelling bee story. Stupid fate. Stupid serendipity.

Soccer is cool!