by Lauren Leto
The Spelling Bee
THE BEGINNING OF MIDDLE school is when you get classified. Sure, identities can shift and reputations may change, but for most your twelfth year on Earth is what seals your social fate. Especially those suburban kids who have the same classmates K through twelve, as I did. There are the standard categories: dorks, populars, dweebs (weaker than dorks), jocks, punks, etc. The “etc.” is a section of circular holes for square pegs, kids who can’t fit into any of the groups and instead roll around their ill-fitting section, unable to mark a spot. Members of the etc. are the dirtiest word of adolescence: “unique.” Being unique in the classification system is much, much worse than being a part of a larger group. “Unique” is what teachers and parents call the kid who believes himself to be a vampire, the girl who eats her boogers, and the boy who cries in class.
I was an eager kid, eager to show off my intelligence, eager to learn. Being a heavy reader is always a big downfall of the adolescent mental state because you start to expect the experiences that often appear in books. I expected (or even might say wanted, so fully I believed myself to be a part of a grander tale, so thoroughly I invested myself in stories) horrible incidents on my way to adulthood, just like those in the lives of the heroines in my young-adult novels: a first period that bleeds through my white pants in front of the whole lunchroom, mean nicknames about my breasts given to me by my peers, a crush who acts like I don’t exist and goes out with the prettiest girl in school, a first kiss couched in bad breath and awkward tongues. I would be wrenched into adulthood by a passageway of mortifying, embarrassing events that would change me. I welcomed it. I knew full well that however bad it got, I’d have a happy, tidy ending just like my admired protagonists. The school would rally around me, the episode would spark insightful conversations, the guy would realize his girlfriend is shallow, and I’d emerge triumphant. For every action, there is a reaction. And those reactions tend to load the victim up with enough good fortune and joy. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always mirror fiction. Especially not in middle school.
I was unclassified going into the winter of my sixth-grade year. I was a nothing. I didn’t exist. One day, announcements came over the PA that sign-ups for our school’s spelling bee would be held in the library after school. I had read enough young-adult novels to know a spelling bee was just the type of rite of passage that a twelve-year-old like me needed to experience. I’d win, the crowd would cheer, my position as a dork and all the bespectacled friends who might come with it would be solidified. I’d gladly take on taunts about my brain size or too-high pants in exchange for being recognized as something. At the beginning of the year I might have held hopes of becoming popular, but by four months in I just wanted friends.
I headed to the library and picked up the packet of words they handed out. I snorted at how easy it seemed; the packet was around twenty pages long, but come on! They gave you all the answers! I had been expecting to be tasked with reading the whole dictionary, pouring over archaic words like “keitloa” or “Zwischenspiel.”
For weeks I studied, writing out the words, closing my eyes and spelling them out while on the way to school (I crashed my bike twice), having my mother quiz me. She’d paint her nails, glance at the sheet, and say, “Expeditious.”
“E-X-P-E-D-I-T-I-O-U-S.”
She’d glance back at the sheet and say, “Languid.”
I protested. “Wait! Mom! You didn’t check to see if I was right. You didn’t look at the spelling of ‘expeditious.’” A sigh and an eye-roll thrown in my direction. It’d be years until I realized she didn’t need to check because she knew how to spell better than I did. I’d grab the sheet from next to her, exposing myself to the correct spelling of “languid” as I verified “expeditious,” in the meantime losing memory of how exactly I did spell it. My mother never understood why someone wanted to know more. Her daughter’s eagerness to prove herself as a lonely dork confused her. I have a feeling that after our spelling sessions she knelt and prayed I’d find an interest in cheerleading (which she had repeatedly signed me up for, despite my lack of coordination and congealment with the fellow cheerers).
My favorite part of the practice was the way you had to spell out the word in competition—“repeat word, spell, repeat word”: “Expeditious. E-X-P-E-D-I-T-I-O-U-S. Expeditious.” To this day, I have no idea which fork goes where at a place setting or how to properly write a thank-you card, but my etiquette when it comes to spelling a word for someone is pristine. I was in love with the fact that during competition you couldn’t go backward, you couldn’t say, “Oh wait! I meant I-O-U instead of A-O-U!” Your mind had to nail every letter; it was important to pause and mentally touch every part of the word before speaking.
The day of the event I was jazzed, joyed. Since it was my first year at the school, I hadn’t known what a large event they made it. I expected a classroom; I got the auditorium. Each period, all the English class came down to watch, and for the last couple of rounds, the entire school came down. Parents were in the audience as well; my mom eventually showed up, when I was far enough along that it qualified as an “event she should be at” in the parents’ handbook.
It was a while before I realized how well I was doing. I was aided by the fact that everyone was watching, flying high on adrenaline. Sometimes, just for effect, I’d ask for a definition. Even better, two boys whom I thought were cute had participated and were already taken out. Surely they’d realize how superior and, thus, immensely eligible I was because I beat them.
It was down to the last three people. I was the youngest kid onstage. Feverish with my good fortune, I started trying to spell faster and faster. “Loquacious. L-O-Q-U-A-C-I-O-U-S. Loquacious.” I’d purse my lips afterward, as if I had somewhere better to be and this commitment was wearing me thin. I blew everyone’s mind (I was sure of it) when I sped through “Segue. S-E-G-U-E. Segue.” I could hear an intake of breath from the audience as they wondered how I could have possibly missed the “W”…then the teacher’s voice announcing I was correct and everyone breathing out in confusion. I saw my mom smile, relieved I didn’t make a rookie mistake on such an obvious spelling bee trap.
People aren’t fully formed yet during middle school, they’re just globs of hormones and wandering personality traits gained through osmosis from pop culture, with senses of humor consisting almost entirely of canned lines from funny movies. And around that time, Adam Sandler was king. Billy Madison was huge, and everyone easily took on his dopey way of losing his temper and cross-eyed mocking.
I was back up at bat. Confident, smiling at my audience. A regular Vanna White with my presentation of letters. The teacher leaned into her microphone and said, “Lauren, your word is ‘spaghetti.’”
“Why don’t you just give her the trophy?!” The line from Billy Madison, when he gets frustrated competing against a girl during a spelling bee after she receives an easy word from the teacher, rings out. The entire audience started laughing and I did as well, enthusiastic that everyone was seeing how easily I zipped through the words.
Still laughing along with my audience, I quickly prattled off, “Spaghetti. S-P-A-G-H-E-T-T-Y…” And horror struck. The only thing that could have been funnier to my audience than a Billy Madison line was the girl onstage misspelling such an easy word in such a silly way. The audience began hyperventilating with laughter as my face reddened.
Even the teacher seemed tickled as she said, “I’m sorry, Lauren, that’s incorrect.” Tears filled my eyes. How could I misspell “spaghetti”? After “surreptitious” and “sachet”?
I should’ve known better than to go to my mom for reassurance after I left the stage. She was still laughing, the same laugh as all the middle schoolers. “My Italian daughter! You eat spaghetti all the time! How do you not know how to spell it?!” Try as I might, I couldn’t convince my mom that it was a flub, not an intellectual error, a slip of the tongue due to speed and hubris. My mom kept laughing too loud to hear my protests.
&
nbsp; When I went home that night, my mother made spaghetti for dinner. To really drill the point in, she decorated my room with spaghetti boxes, having used a Sharpie to double-underline the “I” on all the boxes. “My Italian daughter! I can’t believe it!”
It turned out I couldn’t convince anyone at my school as well. No matter how many times I argued that I knew how to spell “spaghetti,” it was just a mistake, not one person in my life believed it was a slip of the tongue. There was no triumphant ending, only humiliation and a joke that hasn’t depreciated but instead gains momentum from its frequent repeating at holidays and bars. I was “the girl who can’t spell ‘spaghetti.’” The word “spaghetti” in my presence caused snickers for the next six years from my classmates.
It’s been well over a decade since that incident and my closest friends who knew me during middle school enjoy making me miserable by bringing up the anecdote in front of new friends, new boyfriends, anyone I introduce to them. The man in my life will tell them, “Lauren makes great pasta sauce.” They start to chuckle and ask, “Does she ever make you spaghetti?” I’ll palm my face as he nods, privately somewhat impressed with the fervor my friends still feel for this personal joke. “She seemed so smart and then we all found out she couldn’t spell ‘spaghetti’!”
Your Moveable Feast
I LOVE DINNER PARTIES. Eating too much, laughing with friends, and getting sloshed. None of those is anything less than perfect. I find readers have an affinity for wine foremost—there’s something about lingering with a drink that requires interpretation that melds well with our type. Among bookworms there is also a higher-than-average percentage of self-identified “foodies,” which might be the most annoying label the New York Times has ever propagated. Due to this, mention the word “dinner” and the only event that would get a book lover more excited is if you had said “brunch.” Maybe it’s the remnants of the Algonquin table on the legacy of being a reader, or maybe we just really love to shovel food in our mouths when we’re not devouring words with our eyes, but either way, readers love to eat with friends.
Could you imagine getting the chance to break bread with your favorite author? It’s hard, while reading about Paul Auster and Lydia Davis’s marriage, not to wonder what it’d be like to go on a double date with them.
Let’s examine what might happen if some famous literary duos were present at your dining table.
Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of the Waspy perennial favorite The Great Gatsby, had a tumultuous and rapturous relationship with his wife, Zelda. They were a favorite of gossip circles for their dramatic behavior. Zelda once leapt into a stairwell because Fitzgerald was having an intense discussion with dancer Isadora Duncan. Another time, Zelda collected all the jewelry from guests at a party and—with claims that she was “making soup”—threw all of the jewels into boiling water on a stove. It must be noted Scott was more than just influenced by Zelda: famously, the ending in This Side of Paradise is taken straight from Zelda’s diary. Scott once recorded Zelda saying she hoped their daughter would be a “beautiful little fool”—the exact same thing Daisy Buchanan says about her daughter.
Imagine drinking with the two of them: Zelda dancing on the table while Scott spills whiskey on your carpet. Zelda trying to throw herself in front of a cab. Scott drunkenly begging after her. God help me if I spend too much time talking to her husband. They’d tell florid stories about their adventures, embellishing the facts and talking too loudly. It would be wonderful. Nothing other than champagne and sidecars would be served and I’d probably get stuck with the bill.
Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes
Sylvia Plath, poet and author of The Bell Jar, was married to fellow esteemed poet Ted Hughes. The couple got hitched only four months after they met and separated two children and six years later when Ted admitted to having had an affair. Five months into their separation, Plath committed suicide by sticking her head in an oven. Six years later, the once-mistress of Hughes who had become his companion murdered herself and their four-year-old child by ingesting sleeping pills, turning on the oven, and letting the house fill with gas.
Melodramatic much? At dinner, Hughes will be philandering, Plath will be despairing. She’ll take a moment to note the spaghetti you prepared was like ropes of domesticity. Sylvia really shouldn’t be drinking with her medication so she’ll just sulk. Hughes will be talking too close to my face, spitting about how great their holiday in Spain was and how interesting the people were to watch.
Paul Auster and Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis, revered translator and flash fiction author, and Paul Auster, author of novels heavy with coincidence and failure. Coincidentally, his marriage to Davis failed. This private couple had their relationship exposed a bit by Auster’s second wife Siri Hustvedt’s roman à clef What I Loved. About a year after Auster’s son with Davis was convicted as an accessory to a murder, Hustvedt wrote the novel, which involved a middle-aged man with a son going through a very similar-sounding situation while dealing with a steely first wife.
Davis will casually make verbal notations of all the objects around us while avoiding saying anything personal. She’ll mention the weather first, in a low voice, and smile in exasperation at the heat. Auster won’t sit next to her. We’ll have salad and filet mignon, Auster will drink too much red wine, and Davis will give him a look if he indulges in too much red meat. There’ll be bitching about an editor and Auster will regale us with funny stories about his neighbors. Davis will grow quieter as Auster grows louder.
Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman
Much maligned on blogs for their love of talking about their love for each other, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon, and his wife, Bad Mother memoirist Ayelet Waldman, have built a distinct brand around their marital bond. Waldman first raised the ire of the literary press with an essay in the New York Times proclaiming her love for her husband over her children and arguing for her right not to apologize for it. The essay also detailed their fantastical sex life, mentioning lube and vibrators. Heaven forbid a married couple experiment in the bedroom.
The Chabon-Waldman dinner will be full of chatter and opinions—they’ll grope each other, overshare sexual quirks, and correct other dinner guests about the best way to tell their kids about the birds and the bees. They’re like college freshmen who haven’t yet realized it makes friends uncomfortable when he’s stroking her inner thigh while carrying on a conversation. But you kind of forgive it, shrug it off. They’ve been together over a decade; they’re the lucky ones. We’re all just too jaded to let love be love.
Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer
Wundercouple Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer found comfort in each other around the same time they found comfort in practically every book critic they encountered. Krauss, author of the novel Great House and The History of Love, appropriately met Everything Is Illuminated novelist Foer while at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Since then, the two have kept details of their relationship private even during a much-speculated-upon episode when the two almost simultaneously released books involving precocious children as their protagonists.
Am I even going to drink? I can possibly imagine crisp white wine coupled with some of the couple’s prosaic white whine. Maybe we’ll meet for brunch and mimosas. The Brooklyn restaurant where we’ll meet has an outdoor garden. They’re busy, they’re really busy, they’ll explain when I ask what they’ve been up to. It’s hard to get their kids into the preschool they’ve chosen. Foer will furtively eye the bacon I’m trying to enjoy and explain the exact process of smoking and curing pork, which I could have already read about in his book, but we both know I haven’t bothered to buy a copy.
Vera and Vladimir Nabokov
The Russian-born Lolita novelist who described himself as being “as American as April in Arizona” was also a professor, a writer, and a butterfly watcher. Vera and Vladimir Na
bokov met while Vladimir was working as a translator in the publishing house of Vera’s father. They both had ambitions to be writers, but Vera ended up in Vladimir’s service as editor, typist, agent, and driver. Vladimir never learned how to drive. She would type up his novels from the index cards he drafted, leading many to speculate that she had a heavier hand in shaping his stories than she was given credit for. Vera even used to carry a gun to protect her famous and frail husband.
I suspect this couple is not as boring as you might be tempted to assume. Vera will be flitting around Vladimir, making sure he has everything he needs and anticipating any requests before he can even speak them. Vera will be consistently self-effacing; I’ll try to compliment her on her dress or shoes and she’ll say, “This old thing?” Dinner will be a hefty Italian meal with red wine. Vladimir will have a beer. I’ll ask Vladimir a pointed question about one of his books, why he chose this word or another. He won’t remember exactly. Vera will pretend to ignore the question. Another dinner guest will later whisper in my ear that “Vera probably chose that word.” Vladimir will make us all laugh with a story about how his students continue taking notes even if he’s repeating a paragraph he just read.
Kathryn Chetkovich and Jonathan Franzen
Author Kathryn Chetkovich, longtime girlfriend of the oft-worshipped Jonathan Franzen, once wrote an essay about the frustration of being in the same profession as her immensely accomplished significant other. That essay, “Envy,” unfortunately remains her best-known work. The story goes that they met while they were both struggling writers; Franzen eventually churned out The Corrections and was blasted to the literary forefront, whereas Chetkovich still hadn’t found her voice. The result, as she makes clear in her essay, was unadulterated envy.