10 year old Betsy
Okay, I admit it. I’ve always been a lousy speller. Though one might not expect this from a straight A student, it is true. I can’t account for it. Perhaps it has to do with lack of ability to visualize abstractions in my head. I don’t know; it just is true.
In fifth grade (the grade from the Featured photo), we had a class-wide spelling bee, some 30 students. Lisa LeVine and I were the last two standing. My final word was “hello”. Should have been a piece of cake, right? Slam-dunk, winner! But already a child of the media era, I spelled it like Jell-o, with a hyphen. Mr. Kolb, my wonderful teacher, couldn’t believe that I went down on that simple word. Lisa LeVine for the win!
In third grade, I tested at tenth grade reading level. Somehow, that didn’t translate into spelling accuracy. As I grew older and wrote longer papers, I always had my Merriam Webster at the ready. “Spell check” has saved me, or perhaps crippled me and hastened my dive into deplorable spelling. The fact that WordPress (the underlying writing platform for Retrospect) lets me know if I’ve misspelled something, but but doesn’t appear to offer any “Spell check” function (at least in the five years that I’ve been writing, I haven’t found it) means I always write with my iPhone handy and am constantly looking up words.
The older I get, the worse it becomes. It is as if I’ve lost the ability to sound out words. Truly embarrassing (one word that I actually DO know how to spell, along with accommodate…another one of those words with two double letters that I learned long ago, but is frequently misspelled; yes, that’s another one).
So spare me the distain, or clucking tongues. Everyone is entitled to be lousy at something.
Betsy PfauRetired from software sales long ago, two grown children. Theater major in college. Singer still, arts lover, involved in art museums locally (Greater Boston area). Originally from Detroit area.
Well, Betsy, you are obvious proof of the point made right at the beginning of the prompt: “According to most academic experts, spelling aptitude is a poor way to judge someone’s intelligence.”
That said, if I had been your lawyer, I might have argued that you had gotten all the letters right in “hello,” and that punctuation (i.e., the hyphen) didn’t count. Still problematic, I know, but maybe I could have at least plea bargained you down to a re-do with a new word.
In any event, yes, be absolutely proud that spelling is the one thing you are lousy at. And, by the way, adorable picture (as usual).
Where were you when I needed you, John? Thanks for taking my side about getting the letters correct, if not the punctuation. Silly, but I remember the episode vividly, though it happened in early 1963! It obviously scarred me for life. I could even share pictures of Lisa from various birthday parties of yore. She gave extravagant gifts and we were quite friendly.
Sadly, Betsy, though I was doing just fine in junior high, I hadn’t gotten my law degree just yet. Nor was I admitted in Michigan. But next time you’re in a spelling bee….
Yes, next time…
I’m with you, sister. Check out the link in my story for this week.
Yes, I’ve read your story. Very interesting!
Yes Betsy, there are worse things to be lousy at, like COOK-ING!
Uh oh! I’m lousy at cooking too, Dana. But I can sing, dance, I’m a good friend and a nice person. That’s gotta count for something!
Yep Betsy, counts big time!
And Suzy, thanx for the spell check!
I have to agree with John, the hyphen shouldn’t have disqualified you when you got all the letters in the right place. Maybe if you were competing at the national level, but not in just a classroom bee. You were probably traumatized for life, and that’s why you’re not a good speller now. Can we find Mr. Kolb and get a re-do?
That would be lovely, Suzy. Mr. Kolb was a great guy. I ran into him once, years later. He wound up as a school administrator in the Detroit public schools.
Well, Betsy, at this stage of our lives one of the privileges is being OK with what we are not good at. You and Laurie have something to share. And yes, I totally believe that spelling ability and intelligence are not correlated in any way. I’m the writing/spelling/language expert in our house, and Dick is the math whiz. That’s the way it is, and I like that we have complementary skills.
Thanks for giving me approval, Marian. Like you, I live with a math/tech guy. We compliment each other’s strengths and that’s a good thing.
Congrats on your 217th story – very impressive!
I suffer from the opposite – spelling errors jump out at me even if I just glance at a page, and I find errors that copy editors have missed – oh how my reviews of Marketing materials are dreaded by my team because I invariably find something amiss! Must have been because as a non-native English speaker I was fiercely determined to master this language better than my peers as a way of fitting in at an early age.
Keep it up, I enjoy your stories!
I think you are on to something, Lutz. I’m sure learning English as a second language made you more sensitive to spotting spelling errors. And thank you for reading and enjoying my stories. I appreciate your commenting on that.
Betsy, your engaging story (and Laurie’s) gave me a lot of food for thought. I wouldn’t be surprised if spelling reform is on the horizon, with text messaging (r u awake) kind of a grass roots version. Spell check works sometimes, other times not so much…why not a purely phonetic version of spoken English? After all, who needs those silent letters? Context would take care of homonyms, and it would minimize difficulty for people with dyslexia, ADHD, and those learning English as a second language. I absolutely do love our language and want to preserve it, and its spelling, but maybe two versions could live side by side.
I confess, your side-by-side language suggestion gives me pause, Barb. My younger child absolutely hates the abbreviations used in texting, so I am careful not to do that with her. I understand your impulse, but I am also old-school about English. It is a weird language, but it is OURS and somehow, I am not ready to give it up yet. Particularly as someone who reads the news. But I am interested to see how things develop in the future.
As I mentioned, I, too, love our language and want to preserve it! I’m very old school in that regard. But, technology has a way of having its way with us…no matter how much we resist. There’s part of an entire generation that “speaks” in text-speak.
Yes, you did mention that, Barb. And you are correct; the next generation does “speak/write” an entirely different language. We will have to see what happens. It does make me feel old.
Good thoughts Bebe, and/or bring back Esperanto!
I too am lousy at spelling, and never won a spelling bee. In your case, the embarrassment was limited to a single class, and not to a wider audience, or least look at the event with that memory.
We are partners in this, Joe. But we have other good qualities, so who cares?
EEK, Betsy, you had to bring up “accommodate?” In 7th grade, I went out early in the spelling bee at my school for not doubling the M in “accommodations.” That made two years in a row that I bombed out for not doubling a letter. For the first one, see my story for this week’s prompt.
P.S. As to being a “child of the media,” I was tossing out spelling words to elementary-aged kids on an after-school trip in the 1980s. I gave a boy named Josh the word relief and he spelled it R-o-l-a-i-d-s.
Your story, BTW, has some nice subtle stylistic rhythms to it. Notice how the opening sentences are short and punchy, and then you slide in a couple longer ones and introduce the concept of “visual abstractions” which is more intellectual and less punchy. As you reach the end, the next-to-last paragraph has longer flowing sentences with longer words (e.g. accommodate). And then you revert in the final paragraph to two short sentences. Back to punchy mode. It makes a nice read.
Your tale of misspelling “accommodate” is all too common, Dale. And laugh-out-loud funny about “how do you spell ‘relief?'”! You frequently comment on sentence structure. This was a short story for me; there was some deliberate point to the quick sentences at beginning and end. Glad you liked that.
I hope to read your story later today.
Um… ah… Bets? The word “let’s” in the phrase “…Word Press let’s me know” should not have an apostrophe. And “Word Press” is actually kerned as “WordPress.” Just sayin’… 🙂
Well, I’ve made the appropriate edits. I didn’t realize that WordPress was concatenated (though I’ve looked at it for years now; amazing that one can look but not SEE). As for the apostrophe, many others read this too, but that error got past all of us, thereby proving my point. Sigh. I apologize for that one. Truly hate that it got past me.