As Far As I Can Tell

I went to second grade at a small school near my house, located in Fawn River Township, but still technically part of the Sturgis school district. Second grade was great — I sat on a big rock in the oversized playground and whittled sassafras sticks all recess long. At the end of the year, my academic aptitude was evaluated, and sure enough, it proved to be too high to let me wistfully whittle my life away.

So in third grade I entered Congress school, in the “gifted and talented” class. Besides branding us with a moniker that gave us instant and unwanted pretension, they also pushed us to complete roughly fifth grade level work. I didn’t mind, except for the spelling.

These were tough words — spelling bee words. Every week we’d have 20 of them, and every week I’d fail miserably. When I’d had enough, I turned to what every little kid pushed beyond his means does: I cheated.

There were two modes that the desk could be in, slanted and flat. When in flat mode there was a roughly two inch gap between the metal cradle of the desk and the wooden top; perfect for my mischievous plan. I would write down all the words really small, and prop them up inside of this gap. Then, with every new word recited by my teacher I would “relax” a little, and slump down enough to catch a glimpse of the word list. Sometimes I would write with my head down, being able to look over the list constantly during the quiz.

Eventually my conveniently timed relaxation and subsequent eye darting caught the attention of Mrs. Sprowl. I was caught, and my punishment was that I had to tell my parents about it. How they would have enforced this, I’m not sure. Chances are they called my parents ahead of time to let them know it was coming, but to 3rd grade me it seemed like I was letting them in on my secret life of shame. After some crying and apologizes I promised it would be the last time I’d ever cheat.

It wasn’t of course, and I still can’t spell worth shit. Thank god for computers.

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I found these spelling tests discarded in a leaf pile outside of my house today. My favorite: “When will you study?”.