Never at a Loss for Words

Take a look at my Daily Photo



Last weekend the whole family packed into the minivan and took a trip to Barnes & Noble in an attempt to stave off cabin fever. While there we picked up Scrabble. It has been so long since I’ve played Scrabble. Since the last time my vocabulary must have improved greatly, because I was on fire last night. I knew it was going to be a good night when I started off the game with sundry. Sundry, people. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word in my life, and yet my brain looked at the jumbled letters on my rack and came up with sundry. Granted, it wasn’t a rack-clearer, but still. Sundry! I went on to lay down plenty more five and six letter words. Later on, in desperation time (I carried three i’s for most of the game) I came out with vim. Vim!

It amazes me that my brain has been storing words that I never use. Just how big of a change this is cannot be understated. I finished off grade school with nine straight trimesters (three year's worth) of F’s in Spelling. That’s F F F F F F F F F. The only reason I got accepted into Holy Cross High School was that they combined my Spelling grades (F’s) and my Grammar grades (A’s & B’s) for an “English” grade of C. In my Freshmen year of high school, where Vocab was taught one quarter and English the next then Vocab then English, here’s what my report card looked like: F B F B. So you could say that Vocab was never really a strong point for me.

I think my spelling ability is even picking up, which is weird because I've been assuming that using Spellchecker as a crutch has made it worse. Some of this might come from my seven-year-old constantly asking me how you spell things. He's like a walking pop quiz.

So bring on Ms. Anne Marie Byrnes and her Vocab tests. I’m ready.

[I’ve left out the fact that I whooped the missus’ butt in the above Scrabble match since she was in an drug-induced pre-bedtime trance for the game and wasn’t really in the mood to play, especially against someone who was getting a little too excited about the word vim. And if I've spelled anything wrong in this post, please be gentle.]