Ham: The Crushing Word

Once upon a time, I had an embarrassing moment. Is there anyone who hasn't had one of these? But I am about to disclose this embarrassing moment to the entire blogging world, and as most embarrassing moments are never nearly as embarrassing years later or considered very embarrassing by the rest of the world, I'm afraid you will not understand my trauma. Nonetheless, I will share it anyway.

When I was about eight years old, I entered a spelling bee. This bee was unlike any other bee, however, because it didn't buzz--meaning that it wasn't a real spelling bee, since it wasn't big and official, and the honor of winning wasn't huge and tremendous. However, it was at the Family Convention, in the dining hall with what seemed like a multitude of people, when I went up front with my age group and competed in this bee. A turn or two passed, and I managed to survive all right. I wasn't a terrible speller, so that would explain my beginning survival. Then came the momentous moment. I think Meredith was before me, and after she had spelled her word correctly Mrs. Kathy D. gave me the next difficult word to spell: "ham." Standing up, I was suddenly overwhelmed. Here I was, in front of a large room full of people, asked to spell a word I had never heard of before. Of course I had heard of ham, and did indeed know how to spell it, but I knew that they would never ask me to spell a word as easy as "h-a-m," so it must be a homonym, and therefore a word that I didn't know. Drenched in my timidity and torn by indecision and awkwardness ("a-w-k-w-a-r-d-n-e-s-s!"), I decided that the humiliation of misspelling a word I didn't know would be greater than just being skipped. "Are you sure?" Mrs. Kathy D. asked, all compassion. "It would mean that you would be out." On the brink of tears, I nodded, and sat down. Daniel A. was next to me, and only half standing in front of his chair, as if being afraid that standing up all the way would draw too much attention to himself, he produced the stupendous answer: "Ham: h-a-m."

I was stunned. I was shocked. I was utterly humiliated. This was probably by far the worst thing that could have happened to me, or so I thought at the time. Probably every single person in the room was privately laughing at me, amazed that I didn't know how to spell a little word like "ham." The whole world would probably have heard of it by the end of the day, and then I would be an outcast, not able to lift my head from my weighty embarrassment. I would probably not be able to live it out, and most likely people would remember it for years to come with jeering humor, and would think me a very poor speller. I knew that almost everyone present was not cruel enough to openly ridicule me, but I would never know if they were secretly enjoying it or not, and I would probably live the rest of my life with the suspicion that everyone was laughing at me.

Naturally my mother, ever wise and comforting, tried to assure me. "They won't remember it, Kayla," she said, then added, "You'll be laughing about this in a couple of years." Eventually I dragged myself into believing the first part of her prediction, but I could not make myself trust the latter one. This was not a laughing matter. It was too big for that.

Probably about three years later I had sufficiently recovered in order to laugh about it, but only in a hesitant sort of way. Now I believe I am finally released from my conjured debasement. Oddly enough though, I found that not everything my mom prophesied was completely true. As a matter of fact, at my first girls' week over a year ago, we were travelling in the van from New Jersey and we were sharing embarrassing moments, so I told them this. When I was finished, to my mixed amusement and distress, Amy B. burst out, "Oh, I remember that!" Oh dear. Hey, excuse me, hello, you are not SUPPOSED to remember it! Now you only know it because I've told you, right? Right. Because if you did remember it, maybe I was right to be embarrassed. . . . .

. . . . but stories are always better when you're laughing at yourself.