Haunting



Apparently everyone on Food Network is making salmon today.  Do you know what I think of when I hear salmon?  Fourth grade.  Gee, Jenn, that's a weird connection.  Please tell us why you think about fourth grade when you hear salmon.  I'd be happy to...

In fourth grade I was a spelling bee queen.  I was in all of them and I was good.  Real competition, right here, I tell ya.  We'd even have practices I had to go to.  Yes, I was a loser.  Who cares.  I liked spelling.  Andrea, my bff at the time, did them, too.  In order to remember how to spell the word citizen we rhymed it with 'zit'izen and BAM... you've got citizen.  Clear skin was important to us apparently and zits were on our minds.  Anyways...

I was in the spelling bee and it was my turn.  "Jennifer, spell the word salmon".  Without so much as blinking I stated "Salmon.  S-A-M-O-N.  Salmon."  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  The silent L!  What kind of dumb language has a silent L?  Stupid America.  Cost me the spelling bee.

After the spelling bee I went to go see my mom to tell her the news.  She taught in the same school I went to, but was unable to come to the spelling bee.  I got to her classroom and told her I lost and I think I was crying.  She gave me a card and it said that she was so proud of me.  I still have it.  It has hugging bears on the front.  I'm pretty sure she wrote that before knowing what the outcome was going to be. 

And thus, I'm having a pity party over my 4th grade spelling bee defeat that happened twenty years ago while watching Rachael Ray cook.  Maybe the spelling bee is the reason why I don't eat seafood.

P.S. I used spellcheck for this post because how embarrassing to misspell something while gloating over your amazing spelling abilities outside of fish breeds.  It was all correct.  Salmon, 1.  Jenn, 1.