Two Sundays ago, I blogged about my auditory learning
disability and how that affected my ability to spell. As long as I had a
speller with a list of words in it to memorize each week in grade school, I
could fairly well ace the spelling test each Friday. That changed in high
school. For the first three years there was no spelling. Then, in my senior
year, I signed up for English Literature.
Studying
the English poets, essayists, dramatists, and novelists from the Anglo-Saxon
period up to the early twentieth century enthralled me. I’d always been
passionate about reading. So studying English lit seemed like daily entering “seventh
heaven.”
Well,
that’s not quite the truth. The literature transported me to celestial realms,
but Sister Mary Rosaria’s insistence on spelling didn’t. Each day she’d assign us a reading from
the lit book. The next day she’d begin the classroom period with a quiz of ten
words she’d chosen from the text we’d read.
We
never knew what those words would be and sometimes the text was so erudite that
I simply couldn’t memorize all the words that might appear on her list. I
couldn’t divide unfamiliar words into syllables and sound them out, much less
pronounce them. I simply saw a word that I didn’t know and mostly figured out
its meaning in context. So when she said a word, it was coded. That is, I often
had no idea as to what letter started the word, much less what letters
followed.
Sister
Mary Rosaria strode up and down the aisles, declaiming each of the ten words. I
scribbled a group of letters on the paper. I didn’t even know then what a
syllable was or that each syllable in the English language used a vowel.
She
completed her list, then continued striding as she spelled the words correctly
for us. We determined our score and gave it to her to record in her grading
book. She strode as she recording our grades.
Sometimes,
all the words eluded me: 0 out of 10. Sometimes, I conquered as many as 3. That
was cause for celebration on my part.
But
not so for Sister Rosaria. Each day, she doggedly called my name: “Dolores.
What today?” I gave her my score. Immediately, she rounded the aisle and strode
to where I sat. Muttering all the while, she rolled her sheaf of papers into a
cylinder and bopped me on the head with it.
Sometimes
exasperation overtook her, and she continued to bop my shoulders and upper arms.
I ducked, but her aim was good and it was only paper, so nothing but my pride
was injured.
To
appreciate just how poor a speller I was, you need to know that in our class of
twenty-six, I ended up being the valedictorian. So it’s not surprising that
Sister Mary Rosaria suspected I was being contrary each day by doing so poorly
on the spelling quiz.
“Stop
fooling around, Dolores! What was your real grade?”
“I
got one right.”
“You’re
mocking me! Tomorrow I expect 100 percent from you.”
Ha!
I
did try, but to no avail. I had a good reading vocabulary and if I didn’t know
what a word in the text meant by considering its context, I’d look it up. But I
still didn’t understand how to say the word because I couldn’t interpret the pronunciation
squiggles in the dictionary.
I
didn’t have a good speaking vocabulary because I had no idea how to attack new
words and say them correctly. Whenever an adult said I word I didn’t know, I’d ask
her or him to spell it. Then I’d memorize the letters in order and know that
when I saw those letters they were pronounced the way that person had
pronounced them.
Of
course, if the original person pronounced the word incorrectly, then I still do
so today, even if someone has corrected my pronunciation. Once a word is rutted
in my mind, I can’t seem to change it.
To
this day, I’ll hear a word and realize from its context that I’m hearing how to
pronounce a word I know from my reading but have never known how it sounded
when said aloud. And so I frequently ask people to spell a word for me that
they’ve said and I memorize it so I can use it in writing. And in speech as
well.
And
yet. And yet. I have been an editor for forty-five years. And a successful one
at that. Who can explain the
vagaries of life?
