My son-in-love called me, chortling and snorting; “You didn’t tell me about ‘beacon!’ You didn’t tell me about ‘beacon!’” My daughter was cackling in the background: “Tell him, Dad!” My 7-year-old granddaughter had brought home her spelling words, one of which was her favorite food: bacon. This simple test cracked open the family vault and revealed a closely-held secret.
My first bride has a BS in early childhood education from Wheelock College in Boston, Mass., and an MBA from Pepperdine University; she has a successful consulting business, and just recently resigned her professorship at Columbia University. When she wrote her thesis for her MBA, I read and suggested corrections before she submitted it, for I knew that sometimes her spelling can go sideways. Which is the case with the word “bacon”: she cannot spell it without adding an unnecessary “e.” Our daughter, Lisa, once got in trouble in grade school for insisting that “bacon” was spelled “b e a c o n.” She told her teacher that she knew the spelling was correct because that was the way her mother spelled it. A short conference at school revealed that her mother cannot spell “bacon.” This block on the word has continued for decades and survived numerous challenges; she cannot spell the processed pork word without adding an “e.”
Lisa holds impromptu spelling bee competitions for her two children; she will announce “Spelling Bee,” and toss out random words for the kids to spell. She tries to tailor the words to the abilities of both a second-grader and a sixth-grader, but the second-grader benefits from the challenge of matching up with her 12-year-old brother. Sometimes Lisa will call me in for word duty and judge. I like to toss out words and hear the two contestants spell them.
I was vacationing with Lisa and her family — including her mother — during the finals of the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee. My two grandchildren were watching the contest with their grandmother; Lisa kept popping out of the “watching” bedroom to ask me if I knew the definition of some word the competing youngsters were required to spell. When I said that I did not, she popped back into the room. That evening, a tie was declared between 11-year-old Nihar Saireddy Janga and Jairam Jagadesh Hathwar, 13. The winning words were “Feldenkraus,” (Hathwar) and “Gesellschaft” (Janga). I will leave it to the readers to find the definitions of those words, one of which a fifth-grader spelled correctly.
My grandson delights in teasing me about my poor math skills, but he has yet to stump me on anything about the English language. Which is not to say that I know all the words; there are — after all, more than one million. (If I cannot remember one million beers, I cannot hang onto one million words.) I was sitting in an airline waiting area recently, when a young lady — of perhaps, junior high age — asked me if I knew the definition of “aphorism.” I allowed that I did not, but I’ll not be caught unaware, again. It is a word I would find useful in the telling of some story, the illustration of some memory, perhaps. The word and its definition made it into my notebook; Feldenkraus and Gesellschaft are there to note that every word is useful, though not useful to all. My quests are for the words I might use when practicing my “craft and sullen art” and assembling the 600 words needed for submission to my editor.
I can’t beat one fifth-grader, but I can still “Spelling Beat” my grandkids. And spell “bacon.”