Standing before a large group of people in the library at Lebanon Junior High School, I nervously waited my next turn during the district spelling bee in the spring of 1987. We were down to six students, including three fifth-graders and three “older” kids.
“I might actually have a chance at this thing,” I thought to myself after watching several students miss words I considered “easy.”
Then came my turn. I was going last, so I knew if I got this word, there was a good chance I’d be in the top three or four.
“Your word is lifeguard,” the moderator said.
“This is too easy,” I thought to myself before I blurted it out, way too quickly. “Lifeguard. L-i-f-e-g-a …”
I knew there was no going back. You can’t correct yourself in a spelling bee. So, I humbly, and knowingly, finished the incorrect spelling.
I hung my head and walked briskly to the table where my teacher, Mrs. Pace, dad and a local city official attending the event sat. Mrs. Pace put her hand on my shoulder, knowing I was disappointed, and said, “Ernie, you did really well.”
On the verge of tears, I said thank you as I continued to look at the ground. The city official, a kind elderly man, put his hand out and asked to shake mine: “Young man, you should be proud.”
My dad, who I thought I’d let down, puffed his chest out at the man’s comment, leaned over to Mrs. Pace, who was very devout, and said, “Mrs. Pace, do you know he got up at 5:30 a.m. every damn morning for months to study for this, and those words were a lot more difficult!”
At the time, I was a little embarrassed. Cussing was the norm with the folks I grew up with, but I could tell my teacher was taken aback. She held steady, nodded her head at my father, then smiled at me.
I tell this story because it reminds me how invested my father was in his sons. It was true that I woke up every morning, poring through several pages of difficult words, trying to memorize hundreds of them for the school bee, which I won, and district spelling bee.
I didn’t do it alone, though. Every morning at 5:30 a.m., my dad took an hour break from working in his leather shop to help me study. He took the sheet, randomly picked a word and was the moderator. He circled the ones I struggled with and selected them daily.
“I know you’re getting frustrated, but the minute you decide to give up on getting this word down, the minute it’ll be one they ask you to spell, son,” Dad said.
Ironically, the district contestants weren’t asked to spell any of the words from the long list provided by the national organization. I still think it threw me off.
That was the end of my short spelling bee career. I moved on to the next thing: baseball. But I’ve never forgotten how dedicated the old man was to my months-long obsession. And I’ll never forget how to spell lifeguard.
TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS SERIES 2022
Part III: A partridge and an electronic sign