Monday 23 May 2005

classroom champion

Looking for the bit of paper that says when my postgraduate candidature is due to expire (just to give myself a fright, not because I needed it for anything) I stumbled on a veritable treasure trove, wedged down the bottom of the messiest bookcase: a folder crammed full of tragic, nerdy certificates, most dating back fifteen to twenty years.

Thank you, God!

Here's one - by no means the nerdiest:



"Classroom champion" = fricking hopeless. This means I only managed to outspell the thirty or so kiddles in my grade. The word I bombed on? "Detergent" - loser here spelled it d-e-r-e-t-g-e-n-t.

Heaps more where this one came from.

5 comments:

R.H. said...

We had a spellathon in grade three. It got down to just me and another chap. We each had to spell the same word: Crisis. Unfortunately I had to go first.
The trouble is, I wasn't sure if it started with 'k' or 'c'.
But I went for 'k'.
Then he got it right, of course.
The funny thing about it all, is I had other troubles with him too - this red-headed rat; lots of fisticuffs in the school grounds. That always ended about even.

R.H. said...

Well, it may have been grade four, I don't know. But we used to read a lot, him and me; and go the knuckle on each other.

Ampersand Duck said...

I found such a box a number of years ago whilst with my mother, and we both went 'awww' a lot, until I got to my grade 1 ballet certificate (and believe me, that's really how far I got with that particular activity). After the obligatory 'awww', I turned it over, and written very nicely in my childish writing in four neat columns, filling the whole sheet, were the words 'I hate mum'. Thank goodness she laughed...

Come on, show us some more! I show you mine if you show me yours...

Mel said...

I had a very traumatic spelling experience in year seven. I prided myself on my spelling, and was easily blitzing the rest of my class when I stumbled on the word "diarrhoea". Everyone started laughing at me, and I burst into tears and ran off to sob in - where else? - the toilet.

Ampersand Duck said...

Oh, such sympathy going your way. 'Diarrhoea' is a word I stumble upon even now, and I pride myself on my spelling. Why would you need to know how it is spelled at that age anyway?