bironic

Sorry, I know I still need to get to a few comments from the last one.

Can you guess today's theme, kids?


18. Middle School

Seventh grade English, round one of the annual school spelling bee, where each class holds its own bee until only one student is left, who goes on to the grade-level bee and so forth. We got to "candelabra," and I was first or second, and spelled it "candleabra," I think, or possibly "candelabra." I suspect it was the first plus a lie later, because the teacher said it was wrong, and the next person had to spell it in turn. Except we ended up going through the whole class (or whoever hadn't been eliminated at that point), and nobody could spell it properly; people were baffled, and just kept repeating what had already been said or trying ever-more outrageous variations. When we'd exhausted the last person, the teacher spelled it out for us, and either I or someone else or a bunch of someone elses protested that we'd already spelled it like that and he'd said no. Or maybe one of the last people in line got it right and there were protests. Whatever, the outcome was that he threw out the word and started a new one. (I have no idea what it was.)


19. Middle School

In the eighth grade class bee, it was down to me and one other person. My word was "conceive." After some deliberation, I switched the "i" and the "e," and that was that. I kicked myself afterwards; I'm usually good with visualizing the word in my head. The teacher said in what he probably thought was a helpful voice that that was one of the words that did follow the "'i' before 'e' except after 'c'" rule.

Nowadays it makes me laugh twice as hard because it's a "con-" word, which, as I mentioned in one of those "six random things about me" memes, are most likely to trip me up if I'm trying to think of a word.


20. College

My pediatrician knew I was a reader and liked to give me vocabulary pop quizzes. Once, he asked if I knew what "cockle" meant. On this occasion, he said he had a word that he knew I wouldn't be able to spell. Try me, I said. He said a word that sounded like, "thonic."

Flashback to earlier that year: I'd had a classical mythology professor who was dedicated to the argument that all the ancient Western cultures were high on soma and hallucinogenic mushrooms, from Moses to the Greeks and Romans to remote mountain cultures of South America to Jesus. It was something to behold. Point is, he had his own set of favorite leftover-hippie vocabulary, and one of the words was "chthonic" -- earthly. It had been all over our textbooks (which he wrote / co-wrote).

So I said without hesitation, "c-h-t-h-o-n-i-c," and my doctor blinked at me, and I grinned.


21. Elementary School / Middle School

I could've sworn this was called Spell-It, but that's not turning anything up on Google. I'm sure five more minutes of searching would reveal the name, but: We had a computer game with this cartoon frog that would be running across the screen on a track -- well, the frog would look as if it were running in place, while the backdrop moved behind it -- making slapping noises with its feet on the ground, and hurdles would appear, and you had to type out words correctly indicate whether a given word was spelled correctly or incorrectly for it to leap the hurdle and keep running. It would make some kind of sound when you got one right. I think it would eat the word as it leapt? And you could adjust the speed or difficulty, or they would increase with time? I remember sitting in the spare room playing the game on many an afternoon.