Back in 1992 Vice President Dan Quale came our school and I was called up to spell a word on the chalkboard. I wrote it just as I had learned it. All the letters looked correct and I only had to start over once. It wasn’t my best work, but it was okay. “close enough for government work” I’d go on to hear at least 55,313 times before I finally retired. I heard my teacher say to “write it again” since I had erased it before the Vice President could get a really good look at it. I wrote my word again and this time, the VP told me that it was misspelled. “OMG, what am I missing!?” I breathlessly thought to myself. He said “You forgot something on the end.” I panicked. I couldn’t hear anything else as the blood rushed through my ears. I was about to faint but kept reading and thinking. I read it again. Ten times. A hundred times. I read it over and over but couldn’t see it! I hear an angel next to me whisper something something “E.” To this day I don’t know my own personal savior but I think of them often. Did they get their wings that day? Did they simply get to ascend into heaven now that their work on Earth was finally finished? I’ll never know – but with “E” now firmly in my mind, I gripped the chalk with steely determination and began stroking out the most intense “E” the world has ever seen. And they *were* watching! The electronic sound of TV cameras and video tape whirred throughout the room. Adults everywhere scrutinizing every twist, loop, and whirl of my ascenders and descenders until I finished spelling my word of the day. My word of the century! A word of a lifetime. POTATOE. Everyone applauded and I felt relief as the weight of the world slipped off of me in an instant. I returned to my seat victorious. I sat there calm as a peach ripening in the sun on a cool, breezy summer day while I quietly pooled comfortingly back into anonymity. Later that night, my dad beat the shit out of me for misspelling fucking “potato” on national tv.
*note: this is total bullshit – I’m not that kid.
