Thanks for this.

I come out of Chicago Public Schools. Testing marked me as “gifted” early on. But my single mother couldn’t coordinate getting me into those “gifted” schools.

When I was in third grade, I was entered in the school spelling bee (I am still, newly fifty, and with a long-ago earned law degree, paranoid about misspellings) and ended up squaring off with a girl in the sixth grade.

My word was “answer” and I spelled it as “ansewer”.

Her word was “birthday cake” — more than forty years later and I still remember — fucking “birthday cake”.

And with that, she went on to the district spelling bee and I ran from the room in disgrace.

I don’t think I’ve ever recovered.