instar (pronounced “in-stare’) -- the stage in the life of an arthropod between two successive molts

kinkajou (“kink-a-shoe”) -- a nocturnal arboreal omnivorous mammal related to the raccoon and found in Mexico and South America

healthy (“hell-thie”) -- enjoying health and vigor of body. mind, or spirit.

Above are three of the one hundred words my daughter was required to spell today as a participant in a regional round of the annual National Spelling Bee. She had taken second place in her school’s oral spelldown (last year she was first). The top three from each of some fifty schools gathered at a downtown hotel ballroom today for a paper test. The top fifty will proceed to an oral spelldown in April, and the winner of that will go to Washington in May for the national finals. (Lynn did not make the cut last year.)

Accompanying her today was one of those mother-daughter events that you write about in your memory book. Since the spelling event started at 12:30, we went to the early service at church, and then after Sunday School to Eat ‘n’ Park for brunch. That establishment’s recent ad campaign asks, “Can the generation gap be bridged over mashed potatoes?”

I think it can over pancakes and eggs sunnyside up, with coffee for me, milk for her, and orange juice for us both — more food than we ever consume at breakfast at home. Lynn took this opportunity to broach the subject of how we use and allocate space in our house and the attendant issues of privacy and individual rights. Conversation about these things is necessary, she says, now that she’s entered her “dating years.” (I’ll have another rasher of bacon, please — when the going gets tough, the tough turn to forbidden foods.)

We also talked about my own memories as a spelling whiz. In 1961 I represented Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament School in this very same event. In those days there was only one champ from each school. I’d beaten out Joseph Castiglia on the word “dulce,” a generic term for candy which I knew from the Maida books, particularly Maida’s Little Shop, where she sold the stuff to other girls. (Joe had given “dulse,” which is a kind of edible seaweed, although I don’t think either of us knew that.)

The result was an entire day spent at a local TV station, which would televise the contest of the ten finalists in the evening. It was all oral, and I lasted through three rounds before lunch, which we were given at a restaurant across the street. I went through two more rounds in the afternoon, and in the third I faltered on “lancet,” a surgical instrument used to make small incisions.

This was entirely the fault of Sister Mary Rita, my seventh grade teacher. She told us a joke that went, “What was the world’s greatest surgical feat? Answer: ‘Lansing Michigan.’” So I gave “lanset” as the spelling for the instrument that would do this. In my college science courses I would sometimes have to consult articles in the British medical journal The Lancet. I kicked myself every time.)
 
Thus I ranked #12 among area spellers, and didn’t make it to the televised round. But the event remains among my fondest memories. Each speller received a little goody bag. Among the items were a ball point pen inscribed “Patriot-News Spelling Bee” which I used for years, and the 1961 edition of the Information, Please almanac, which I still have. I made the acquaintance that day of a boy and two girls who would become my classmates the next year at Bishop McDevitt High School, a connection that served to dispel my shyness that first day in the gym full of six hundred members of the new Class of ‘65.

Good spelling can be learned, but only to an extent. Reading early and often helps, as does growing up in an atmosphere where the vocabulary of everyday conversation is deeper than that found on the average sitcom. And a grounding in the classical languages (Latin, Greek, Hebrew) does a lot to help construct a word’s orthographic rendering from what you know of its definition. But I’ve known students who had all those advantages, including one now pursuing a career in rocket science, who had what seemed to be a congenital predisposition to poor spelling. So it’s nature AND nurture, I guess.

venom (“venn-umm”) -- poisonous matter secreted by some animals and transmitted to prey by biting or stinging

surpass (“sur-pass”) -- to go beyond

sophomore (“soph-eh-more”) -- a student in the second year of an educational course

The spellers were seated at long banquet tables and provided with pencils, tissues, and a folder with official lined and numbered sheets for each round of fifty words. Parents were invited to sit in the back and try the test along with the kids. 

The official pronouncer was the same man as last year — he happens to be the principal of the high school Lynn will attend next year. In the tradition of this event, the pronouncer gives the word, its definition, uses it in a sentence, and then pronounces the word again. In some cases, I thought the definition didn’t match the usage in the sentence — for example, slalom was defined as a noun but illustrated as a verb (which sounded dopey: “He slalomed for two hours last night”), and the definition of allegory was really obscure — “a subject addressed in the guise of some other subject,” rather than the one familiar to eighth graders (and most graduate students I know), “a symbolic story.”

After the three words given above (venom, surpass, and sophomore) the woman sitting next to me, who like me was writing her own list, leaned over and whispered, “Are they all this easy?” I shrugged my shoulders. In quick succession then, we had to contend with: 

bartizan (“bar-tiss-on”) -- a small structure projecting from a building and used for
lookout or defense

odontalgia (“o-don-tal-gia”) -- a toothache

ennui (“on-wee”) -- a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction

Lynn has no illusions about making the cut this year. She’s smart and has a good vocabulary and was a self-taught reader at four, but she doesn’t have her nose in a book all the time as I did at her age. For this I am grateful. She’s living a more balanced life than I did, and I think her study habits and her decision not to spend countless hours with the Paideia (the official handbook of the spelling bee, literally, “a book of education”) are both sound.

At home tonight I looked up the words I found tricky. I got at least ten wrong. One word continues to elude me. It’s pronounced “kack,” and it means a heelless shoe worn by infants in the 19th century. The word intrigues me for purposes of writing my historical novel, as if it’s something I should outfit my fictional children in for their baptismal ceremonies. I’ve tried caque, cacque, kacque, kaque, and even the straightforward cack and kack, in three dictionaries, including the OED. If anyone knows how to spell this word, let me in on it.