spelling bee

in the year nineteen hundred and eighty one i was 9 years old, which means i was in the 3rd grade? (those elementary school years are kind of a blur.) when i was in grade school i was really into the spelling bee. i was a good speller, and i remember very clearly that every year my school passed out a sheet of official spelling bee words so that we could practice. (does anyone else remember these?) as soon as we got these practice words i would immediately start cramming, memorizing, asking family members to quiz me, etc...

to make a short story long i competed and won the primary level spelling bee at my grade school. the primary level was grades 1-3 or something like that and the intermediate level was for the older kids. winning the primary granted me the honor of competing in the intermediate level bee with the big kids. i won't go into how i got to the final 3 and was ROBBED because i either did not enunciate, or the "judge" was going deaf. i swear to this day that i spelled grandfather: g-r-a-n-d-f-a-t-h-e-r and not g-r-a-n-f-a-t-h-e-r, as they claimed. i was insulted and horrified to be eliminated on such an easy word, and one that i KNEW i had spelled CORRECTLY.

anyway this is not the focus of the gap i intended to fill. the object of my focus is a dictionary. as the winner of the primary spelling bee i won this dictionary.


during this period in time i had a comprehensive sticker collection. the main focus of my collection were stickers that featured any or all of these elements: rainbows, hearts, unicorns, cats, bears, stars, candy....you get the idea.

so, i had this sticker collection and i didn't know what to do with them. i didn't want to stick them on anything that i might lose or get rid of or decide i didn't like anymore. my prized and carefully curated sticker collection needed a proper and worthy place in the world. but they really did need to be stuck on something, didn't they? they were stickers after all? wasn't that their purpose?

so i decided that this dictionary that i won at the spelling bee would certainly be a cherished possession for decades to come, and was definitely a worthy of being the permanent home of my sticker collection.

i also taped in my spelling bee name tag, and it looks like i traced over my name with one of those metallic paint pens, that were all the rage

i think that it is hilarious that i (not so) very carefully traced over the teacher's handwriting with a pen. what's that about? i also traced around many of the stickers with a pen.

i remember thinking this one was very special

so this dictionary was clearly the perfect choice for immortalizing my collection . it has lasted through the years, through many moves and many, many, many, purges of crap. i have never been able to get rid of this thing. if i hadn't plastered the inside of it with stickers i'm pretty sure it would have been edited out a long time ago. now it like a little peek into the mind of a nine year old me.