What were you like as a kid?

Our school didn't usually enter the regional spelling bee competitions, but we finally did when I was in 8th grade.

There was a big assembly and half the school was there. Everybody in my class knew about my 'streak,' it was like LeBron James entering the one-on-one exhibition contest at your neighborhood Gus Macker tournament. All the girls were batting their eyes at me.

I fuckin' bricked on the third or fourth word, something like 'dog.'

I came off the stage saying, 'what the fuck.' : :

There went my chance at romance (for that month at least). Goddammit.

By the way, did you know there are three different ways to spell 'goddamn it,' all arguably correct?

 

My cousin told me when I was 12 that if I'm ever asked how much I study to always answer, "A lot"

It was good advice.

What was the word?

 

You were probably one of the first Rolling Stones fans in the second grade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6d8eKvegLI

 

"Acerbic."

 

My 5th grade year, I won the school spelling bee on predecessor and won the regional on ukulele after several people missed it. I lost at state on milieu.

My 6th grade year, I won the school spelling bee on grievous and lost at regionals on camaraderie

 

I love that word.

 

I just hate when the default response to my intelligence was that it must have been faked.

Me being smart, or her being a good teacher, were not even remote possibilities in her mind, apparently.

Fuck that bitch.

 

When Ms. Thomas opened the dictionary to the word, I piped in (without looking) with the definition, "Sour or bitter; usually in reference to a sardonic or sarcastic expr..."

"Never mind, I know what it means." ;D ;D

 

Giving dictionaries to spelling bee champions seems pointless.

 

I learned from my cousin to downplay how well I did in school. She's brilliant, her mom was a president of one of the UC schools and she skipped two grades, got a perfect SAT score and was tormented at an early age, which is kind of to be expected when you're 5 and in second grade.

I skipped kindergarten, in large part because my asshole father was trying to compete with my aunt. I did fine academically, but socially things were pretty brutal. When my parents got divorced, my mom had me repeat third grade at a different school and things immediately became different for me. It was a gift from God. I went from being the smallest kid in the class to the one of the biggest. I went from being last picked for teams to being picked first.

I'm guessing it was easier for girls, but my cousin taught me certain things like just taking tests and papers and putting them away without telling anyone what I got. It wasn't like anyone thought I was dumb, I was in the gifted classes, I won spelling bees etc... but I wasn't the Tracy Flick type who would hold up my paper to let everyone know I aced it.

My senior year when I got a sports honor that was in the paper, they printed my SAT score, which my coach told them and wrote that I was likely going to Penn (which at the time was true), I had people come up to me and say, "I had no idea you were smart."

Not exactly a compliment, but that was kind of the point...

 

Yeah, I don't know what they do for kids these days...

 

It took me until middle school to figure out how to handle being smarter than everyone else.