Every Friday, for 8 years, I had to take a spelling test. I know this isn’t that much of a tragedy, because I think this is pretty much the case for every kid in the United States. I’m not sure how other kids studied for Spelling tests, but it was always the same for me. My dad would quiz me in the car on the way to school, on the way home, on the way to soccer, swimming, ice skating, nature club, girl scouts etc. It really is a miracle that he never crashed the mini van while testing me.
My dad, who is a really smart guy, would try and explain why words were spelled the way they were spelled. He would go into stories about each word’s Latin and Greek roots. The longer the story the better; because eventually we would get to where we were going and I would never have to spell the word
I remember a particular word very well….“linoleum”. First off, why on earth would anyone need to know how to spell “linoleum”? I figured that if I ever needed flooring and I couldn’t speak and had to write it down, I’d just write t-i-l-e or w-o-o-d. Never mind my logic, I had to learn how to spell it. In this case, my dad proceeded to say linoleum really slowly to help me sound it out. Have you ever watched someone sound the world linoleum slowly? It’s not pretty. First the backside of the tongue with all its purple veins and gleeking saliva shows. Then there’s the puckering of the lips to make the “no” sound. My poor dad, if he had known that I’d missed out on first grade Phonics, then he wouldn’t have bothered with the sounding out.
When Friday came along, all I could think of was how gross in every way the word linoleum was and proceeded to spell it incorrectly.
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