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June 1st, 2008
04:47 pm - no third place
A buddy and and I were making sandwiches in her kitchen last night, and the national spelling bee was on her countertop television for background noise. As we chatted, the sounds of it began to penetrate my consciousness. I assume this doesn't rise to the level of a legit flashback, but memories of my brief career as a bee kid came to me in actual flashes. I had to sit down and watch. I will tell you the tale.
In third grade, I won the class spelling bee, and then the school spelling bee; participation in both was compulsory. My introverted miniature self and the school runner-up, Mark, were then sent to the county-wide spelling bee.
Mark was a groomed speller, a pro. He never once wore jeans, and had the kind of strict parents who drilled him in front of other kids. I had the kind of parents who moved us from California to New York to New Hampshire, routinely threw frozen peas at each other, and left us babysitterless as soon as my brother was old enough to use the phone. (Coincidentally, this was also the exact age he became interested in MacGyver and thus, explosives.)
I did not want to go to counties.
I did not want to stand up in front of strangers on a Saturday morning in a town I’d never visited before, and speak into a microphone. No. I did not want to compete, especially with all these kids who seemed to know more about the bee circuit than I ever would. They spoke loudly. They spoke like robo-kids. They had, like, methods, tricks. I did not know any of these tricks. I was good at spelling because I read and wrote more than I spoke. Spelling was intuitive to me, not a competitive sport, not a logic puzzle, not an applied formula. It had never occurred to me that you could Win At It. These kids were accustomed to Winning At It. These kids knew each other, their parents knew each other, they were of an ilk, and they were weird to me.
I received a sickening little booklet from Scripps, providing the regulations and some practice words. I read the rules because to me, rules in general were something to hold onto in times of chaos, but I did not practice. I shut it out of my mind. The thought of it made my stomach hurt. This was worse than First Communion, when I had to wear a child-sized wedding dress and veil in 90-degree heat AND be pinched on the waist by that grey-skinned Québécois Father Croteau AND memorize a bunch of Jesus rules and God procedures. Hadn't I been through enough?
On bee day, I wore a turquoise jersey drop-waist dress, and my mother did my hair in a waterfall, which is what we called a high ponytail at the crown with the rest of the hair cascading down, which was obviously very glamorous. I liked my waterfall. I liked my dress. I hated the number they pinned to my dress. I hated waiting in the practice room while they set up those awful metal folding chairs on the stage and other families shuffled into the auditorium. My mother and father and sister sat in the back, at my request, so I could not see them.
The stage smelled like floor wax. The mic was too high for me, but I was too shy to lower it each turn. I didn't know how to do that. I wasn't about to learn in front of everyone. I went round after round, standing on my toes and hearing my voice ring out on a delay, in a kind of fugue state, just wanting it to be over. It was a fluke, an accident, I shouldn't have been there, I didn't want to be there.
And yet. As kid after kid left the stage, and it became clear I could actually win, I began to want it. Really want it.
My sister is still protectively angry about what went down that day.
The word I choked on was “bunkhouse.” An easy word for a nine-year-old. An easy word for an any-year-old.
But the pronouncer said “bonkhouse,” plain as day.
“Could you repeat the word?” We were allowed to ask two clarifying questions. That was one. (I noticed last night on the nationals, the kids could ask as many questions as they needed, provided they kept to the time constraint. Either the rules were different then, or they were just totally fucking winging it in southern NH. I suspect the latter. I suspect our county was rogue. Live Free Or Die.)
“Bonkhouse,” said the very New Hampshirey man. He had a brassy molestache and tiny wire-rimmed glasses.
I couldn't see his eyes, only glasses.
“BONKhouse?” I said. “Can you use that in a sentence?” I should have asked for the definition. But I was stalling, and flustered (this was already more trouble and attention than I ever wanted associated with me.) And he offered, “John must clean the bonkhouse every Sunday,” or something equally non-illustrative.
I hesitated. I closed my eyes for a second that felt like an hour. My mom says she scanned the crowd to see if the other parents were hearing what she was hearing. Even my dad, who cannot hear a damn thing due to Nam, has an incomprehensible Southie accent himself, and can rarely be arsed to become indignant on behalf of any of his children, mouthed bonkhouse? to my stunned mother.
My mother knew that I knew that bonkhouse was not a word. But she also knew I would not break a rule, not rock the boat. If the man said a word, her daughter was going to spell that word.
Bonkhouse. Bee. Oh. En. Kay. Aitch-oh-you-ess-ee. Bonkhouse.
After, we went to Pizza Hut. My parents had a grand time imitating the pronouncer, whose bizarre accent had tripped up another kid (perhaps another import.) My sister said I was the coolest girl there, I had the best dress, the girl who won was a dorkus and had a flowery grandma dress, and plus, I did better than Mark, who was also a dorkus, also ugly, and who cares, anyway.
I drank a ton of Coke but didn't finish my slice. I had the vague sense that my family was proud of me, that something unfair had happened but not unfair enough to complain about, that I was not expected to win, that it was supposed to be viewed as a funny day, that I done good. It’s hilarious to me, now. In the car, though, I burst into tears. Nobody said anything. My father was listening to a Roy Orbison greatest hits tape. The tears passed.
Failing things at which I never attempted to succeed but being upset about it anyway became sort of a specialty of mine.
In seventh grade, I placed third in the school geography bee, which was triumphant due to severe bee trauma and the fact that I didn't know I was good at geography, but sad, because if I’d studied even a little, I would have won. In school band, I became second-chair clarinet. I was once first, but the second challenged me for the chair, and I forfeited. Boy, was my band director disappointed. Not mad; disappointed, which is the absolute worst thing you can be with me. He looked like a ginger Santa, was an accomplished jazz saxophonist and an inspirational teacher (who later let me borrow his electric bass when it became clear I was a little rocker and not a wee jazzbo.) And he loved me. Or he used to. “Why didn't you take the challenge?" I stared at his cinnamon beard and tried not to cry. "That’s all I want to know. You would have kept your chair. You just needed to show up.”
In high school, I kind of assumed I wasn't going to college, due to literally being too cool for school, so I didn't take PSATs or prepare for the SATs. At the last minute, I decided yeah, you know, I will go to college, I ought to take that test. But I didn't think about preparing until the night before. I opened the booklet that came with the registration materials, and it said to set aside three hours to take the practice test. Three goddamn hours? My brain clouded at the intolerable unpleasantness of that, and so I stayed up listening to Check Your Head instead. I got a really excellent verbal score, and a crazily low math score. I was pleased enough with my score and wasn't fussed over the whole thing.
Until college letters started to roll in, and I realized that if I had prepped on the math a tiny bit, maybe I could have gone to some prestigious school, maybe I could have gotten serious scholarship money, and I coulda been a contendah, and who knows? I could be something awesome today. Like a Director of a boring department at a large publishing firm, rather than the Manager of one? Or something. Imagine! (I can't imagine, because I can't do anything, because I went to a state school.)
I was going to say something pithy and convenient and dot-connecty, like, “most people are afraid of failure. I’m afraid of success.” But that’s not it, at all.
I dig success, but only certain specific kinds of successes. I’m shy, I'm hesitant, and I'm kind of lazy when it comes to boring shit like tests and competitions. It's a values thing, in that I don't really value Winning At It, after all. The world that’s important to me is the one that exists in my brainchambers, and there are no tests in here, there's no second chair, no third place, no safety school, no runner-up.
It’s all Indians, no chiefs, all the time, up in this bonkhouse.
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April 27th, 1979
12:00 pm - "friends" only
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