Bruce Cameron: Spelling Boy

Mar 20, 20130

Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2008.

When I was in third grade, I was beaten up on the playground for winning the spelling bee.

Back then, I thought of myself as a pretty tough kid, but I didn’t have a chance in this particular fight: I was at least an inch shorter and 10 pounds lighter than she was.

Apparently by besting the odds-on favorite — a girl we called “Linda Blotnick” because that was her name, and because when someone has a last name like “Blotnick” you can’t not say it every time you mention her — I offended Rhonda Dunn. No one considered that it was Linda Blotnick’s fault and not mine that I knew how to spell “pachyderm” and she didn’t. Nor was it seen as ironic when Linda Blotnick spilled hot tears as the teacher (even he was on her side!) said, “You should know this one, Linda Blotnick,” even though “pachyderm” means “thick-skinned” and by crying over such a minor insult Linda Blotnick demonstrated she was anything but.

Now, Rhonda had a very special affection for Linda Blotnick, and seeing her best friend cry turned Rhonda into an enraged pachydermatous rhinoceros who charged all the way across the playground at me, yelling something that sounded like, “Die, spell boy!”

I saw her coming and had enough time to prepare myself for battle by ducking behind my friend Brad Smith and clutching his coat. (Even ancient warriors like the Spartans had shields — in this case, my shield was Brad.) Brad, however, was uninspired by my brave stand and dodged out of the way so as not to be impaled by rhino horns.

My father never taught me how to fistfight with a girl, though if he’d been there I suppose he might have been disappointed when I started crying. But Rhonda, menacing in a pink skirt and Mary Janes, socked me so hard it knocked the spelling right out of me. If Linda Blotnick was going to cry over “pachyderm,” it certainly seemed reasonable to sob over being punched by one.

“Linda Blotnick always wins the spelling bee!” Rhonda yelled, which was ridiculous — by third grade, you haven’t lived long enough to do anything “always.”

“So what?” Brad taunted from the safety of the top perch of the monkey bars.

Rhonda’s face darkened, and I gave Brad a beseeching look: He wasn’t helping. “She lost this time over ‘butter’!”

Rhonda paused in my beating to give Brad a puzzled look. “‘Butter’?”

“Brad’s word was ‘butter,’” I reminded her. I looked up at Brad. “No, Linda Blotnick lost over ‘pachyderm,’” I said. “It was on the list of spelling words.”

“Yeah, at the bottom of a list of like 500 words,” Brad shouted back. “Who reads those?”

“Now you’re mad at me, too?” I demanded.

“You need to give Linda Blotnick the prize back,” Rhonda decided, raising her fist to explain what would happen if I didn’t.

“It’s not a prize, it’s a certificate, and it’s got my name on it. What good will it do for her to have it? And Brad, you stupid idiot, the last ones on the list are the only ones to read, because they’re the hardest. You know when it gets down to the final people, those are the ones they’re going to use.”

“Hey! Don’t call me stupid!” shouted the boy who had painstakingly sounded out ‘B-U-D-U-R.’

“What does pach ... pack ... what does that word mean?” Rhonda snarled.

“‘Pachyderm’? I don’t even know!”

“Now who’s stupid?” Brad challenged.

“Spell it,” Rhonda ordered. She shoved my shoulder.

“What?”

“Spell it,” she repeated. “But this time, do it wrong.”

I blinked. Clearly there was some sort of principle at work here: Brad hooting at me from the monkey bars, Rhonda the Rhino literally beating me into stupidity — if I caved on this, I would be following the example of all the people in history who held their tongues while despots burned books and trampled intellectual thought.

Of course, I didn’t know about those despots, couldn’t even spell the word because it hadn’t been on the list — I was only in third grade!

“B-U-D-U-R-B-U-T-T,” I said quickly.

Rhonda nodded, satisfied. “Linda Blotnick won,” she pronounced smugly.

And, by third-grade logic, I guess she did.