"I" is for Irritable

We continue this excursion away from the theme of "Stuff: Engineering, Materials and Things" with "irritable," a seemingly harmless little word which brought my very world crumbling down around me some thirty-two years ago.

In sixth grade, I was a wreck, at least in my own eyes. I was uncool, unathletic, awkward and self-conscious.  Basically, like me now, but shorter.  I was always the last one picked in any sporting contest.  I had a bit of a pot belly.  I once laughed while drinking milk and it came out my nose.  In front of a pretty girl.

I was not popular.

I could draw pretty well and I was a fiendishly good reader, and no, neither of those did a thing for my popularity, any more than did the fact that I played the clarinet in band.  Yeah, I was That Kid.

Man, I had forgotten just how bad it really was until just now.  Excuse me for a moment while I go collect myself.  Talk amongst yourselves.

Right.  Anyway, I was also good at spelling.  Again, not something that upped my cool factor in any way, but winning the 1981 Charles H. Castle Elementary School sixth grade spelling contest did mean one thing - I was finally the best at something.  And that, folks, most assuredly is better than not being the best at something.

I remained outwardly humble, of course; noblesse oblige, remembering the little people, not wanting to take undue advantage of my newfound notoriety.  I do admit though, I was proud.

Which, I have on good authority, is the very thing that goeth before the fall, and for me the fall came swiftly and terribly.  A few weeks later at the District contest I missed my very first word.  I spelled "irritable" with one "r."

Yeah, I know.

My humiliation knew no bounds.  A third grader should have nailed that one.  I couldn't even look at my principal, Mr. Chapman, who had accompanied me.  I had failed myself and I had failed Mr. Walker, the best teacher a kid could have.  I had failed Charles H. Castle Elementary School.  My ancestors looked down from heaven and shook their heads sadly. Like Icarus, I had soared too close to the sun, and my fall was no less dramatic.

Never again did I scale the dizzying heights of spelling greatness.  Never again did Genius fly so low to brush me with her gossamer wing.  The next year, at O.J. Actis Junior High school, I didn't even get into the contest.  Mrs. Kendrick made up a rule, on the fly, that you had to have gotten 100% on all your spelling tests, and she did it just to keep me out, which she was looking for any excuse to do.  It may have had something to do with me constantly talking in class and being lazy in my classwork, I don't know, whatever.  Everett went instead.  I think he won, and went on to win everything between that and the World Spelling Bee or something, I don't know, whatever.

But shed no tears for me, kind reader.  They may have have cruelly snuffed out a promising spelling career; they may have robbed me of the future greatness that was rightfully mine, but they could not take away the glory of those few shimmering weeks when, for a brief, glorious moment, I was the best.

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