"Greyarea, why didn't you do the dishes?"

"Mom! You don't understand! I was too busy contemplating my impending doom!"

"Oh, I'm sorry! Don't worry about it, then."

Editor's note: This conversation did not actually take place.

Man, I am SO moving out of my parents house someday.

That was a little joke, see. Ha ha?

Anyway, I remembered the other thing I wanted to talk about.

I watched the movie Spellbound the other night.

Y'see, I don't know if you know this, but I was on the spelling bee circuit as a kid. Three years in a row I went to the regional bee, where the winner gets an all expenses paid trip to the national competition in D.C., and three years in a row I got second place. They gave me a set of Encyclopedia Brittanicas every year, though, which served to lessen the pain. The first set we kept, the second set we sold, and the third set my parents donated to my junior high, giving me the money from the tax break they got for doing so.

But it was really frustrating. The first year I deserved second place. The other kid was good. But the next two years I lost out to inferior spellers, which was really galling.

Not that I would have done that well at the national bee. Honestly, I think I was as smart as any of those kids on the movie. But I wasn't as devoted. I would maybe study two hours a day for a few months beforehand. I wouldn't have been willing to put anything more into it at the time, and I don't regret that decision now. For better or for worse, I've never really been willing to drop everything in favor of complete focus on one specialty...

I did get a lot of mileage out of those encyclopedias, though.

i am not a unicorn; go out and find another one,

greyarea

Diaryland