Gnawing on the English Language

Spelling has always been my strongest subject in school. When I took my SATs, my spelling grade came to more than 90%, well above all the others. I guess this is because it taps into my visual nature. Writing words out is a visual action. You have to see in order to write, and I remember what I see, generally speaking. When speaking, you don't have to spell the words. Unless there is some confusion as to the form of the word being spoken, such as the difference between "fifty" and "fifteen". In such cases you usually just speak more clearly. If that doesn't work, then you resort to spelling it out.

I never would have won any spelling bees in school. Mainly because they throw words at you that are not used in modern society. The reason I am so good at spelling is because I have seen the words before. A few years ago at the National Spelling Bee the winning word was chiaroscurist. I knew that word before they put it up on the screen because I had seen it before. It refers to a technique in art that uses light and shadows to show depth, commonly used by Leonard da Vinci. I learned about it in Art History.

We had a spelling bee in our sixth grade class. I was doing well until I was caught with one word. The word was pendulum. I knew what a pendulum was. My sister had talked about a story she had read or heard about, The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe, and how it had creeped her out. But I had never actually seen the word. A couple other kids tried unsuccessfully to spell it. I think I spelled it p-e-n-g-i-l-u-m. Naturally, I was eliminated. I knew every other word after that, but I got stumped by the one word I had never seen.

But the kids who compete in the National Spelling Bee study dilligently, learning languages and word origins to help them determine if a certain word is spelled with an f or a ph. I never would have had the discipline to do that.

I had my shining moment in the first grade. Our teacher gave us a spelling quiz. One of the words that she gave us was nod. I didn't spell it n-o-d, but I still spelled it correctly. I spelled it G-N-A-W-E-D. Gnawed. Me, a little first grader, barely six years old, had spelled that. I didn't even think of n-o-d. But I knew what gnawed was. My teacher was so impressed with me that she had me go next door to the second grade class and show it to that teacher. She was also impressed and gave me a huge lollipop as a reward.

I knew that word because I had seen it before. Caralee, around that time, had an assignment for her class, to memorize a poem and recite it to her classmates and teacher. Most of the other pupils went for plain old nursery rhymes. Mary Had a Little Lamb. Roses are Red. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. But my sister wanted to do something different, more challenging.

We had a book of childrens' stories, nursery rhymes and fairy tales. She chose a particularly long poem called Over in the Meadow. It consists of ten stanzas, each about a mother animal (a turtle, a fish, an owl, etc.) telling her children to do what they do, and the children would gladly obey. Each mother would have one more offspring than the previous one, so the last mother ended up having ten children.

Well, Caralee, in her attempt to impress the teacher and the class, recited that poem to us constantly so she could memorize it. One of the stanzas spoke about a mother rat and her four little rats.

Over in the meadow by the old barn door
Lived an old mother rat and her little ratties four
Gnaw said the mother We gnaw said the four
So they gnawed all day by the old barn door

So I had seen that word before due to Caralee's constant drilling. She likes to take the credit whenever I tell the story of my first grade spelling quiz. She says that if she hadn't memorized the poem, I never would have made that creative spelling.

But she didn't take the quiz. I did. It was my lollipop, and I didn't share it with anyone!