Bees Can Tell Us
Hey, whaddaya mean calling me an equanimous!
When I was in elementary school sixty-some years ago, every so often the teacher (nearly always a woman) would have the entire class participate in a spelling bee: boys versus girls or visa-versa if you prefer.
I was a pretty good speller in those days. Most boys weren’t, but a few of us weren’t too bad.
On the other side of the room, the girls on average were pretty and impressive, and they knew it.
One girl, Ann, was, well, unbeatable. She could spell any word the teacher could think of, even words the rest of the class did not understand. Ann’s father was the middle school science teacher and led the choir at St. Peters Catholic Church, so Ann was born to become a star student.
These classroom competitions always had the same trajectory. First a boy would get a word. Then a girl would get a word. If the boy misspelled the word, the girl would get a crack at it. And back and forth the words would fly until either all the boys or all the girls were eliminated. The sex still standing at the end won the competition.
Now, I will be the first to admit that spelling well is not necessarily a sign of genius. But it does demonstrate a capable memory, which must account for something.
Anyway, after a short while, there would be two or three boys still standing on our side, and about ten girls left on the other side. (If any of us were trans, in those days you just didn’t talk about something like that in my town…or any American towns.)
After a short while longer, there would only be one boy left on the boys’ side. On the girls’ side, there were usually still six or seven. And all of them were out to get me!
As the last boy standing, I had a long tradition of male chauvinism to salvage. I’d get a word and spell it. Then Nancy got a word and spelled it. Then I got another word and spelled it. Then Cindy got a word and then back to me again. If Cindy misspelled the word, I didn’t.
I must have participated in a dozen of these spelling bees over three or four years in elementary school. They always, and I mean always, ended the same. I could spell as well or better than every girl in the class except one — Ann. In the end, just the two of us were standing and battling to prove our own sex was not only worthy but more worthy.
Every time I spelled a word correctly, the boys cheered. Every time Ann spelled a word correctly, the girls cheered.
But sooner or later, I knew how it would end. With a groan from the boys when I let them down. Of course, Ann also still had to spell the word correctly, or the bee would have ended in a draw.
After losing — again — I always got a sneaking feeling. Ann had an advantage. Why? She always got to hear me misspell the last word first. Very clever of Ann: she used me to eliminate one misspelling.
You might ask yourself how come I never took advantage with the same tactic that Ann used. I would have if I had ever got the chance. But I never, ever got to hear Ann misspell a word. Not once. Ann always won the spelling bees. Always.
And you know the thing about Ann that really got my goat? She was the nicest, sweetest, and kindest girl you’d ever want to know. She never once made me (or any other boy or girl) feel like a loser.
She was not only a great speller, she was a good human being.
When we limit what girls and women are permitted to learn, as a society we hamstring everything we can do to make the world a better place.
Of course, only an idiot would do something like that.
Postscript: At some point in middle school, I got the erroneous notion that what I had to say was more important than how well I spelled it. I have never recovered. If there are no misspelled words in this story, you can thank Grammarly for correcting them before I clicked publish.