The Spelling Monster
I could hear the ticking from the clock tic toc over and over again with ever tic there was a drop of sweat running down my neck and with every toc my fear grew bigger. One minute had passed and then another my hand was holding the marker but I could not bring myself to open it. I heard the faint laughter of my classmates while the teacher told them to shush it up. I looked at Ms. Holmes and saw her mouth moving but I could not make sense of the words coming out of it. I could see the words on the board dancing along with the blanks I had to fill in. There it was at the back of the class staring at me and chanting the word “stupid.” I ran out of the class room and made my way to the bathroom. Fighting to catch my breath and holding back the tears I crawled on top of the toilet. Unable to get the image out of my head I yelled “Stupid monster how much I hate you.”
When my college professor asked us to write a narrative about an event that impacted our literacy development that moment lingered in my head. At first I hesitated and felt a bit embarrassed to talk about this monster that taunted me. But then I realized that this moment shaped who I was as a writer and student. At the age of nine I began to create these monsters in my head each one named after an insecurity or fear I had. I believe this happened because I was a lonely kid and never really had anyone to talk to. Oddly it was my form of dealing with my insecurities and blaming my errors on them made me feel better. One of these was “the spelling monster” that came to me at the age of ten after realizing I had trouble spelling.
Although I practically grew up in this country surrounded by the English language for some reason I could not figure out how words worked. It was a weird phenomenon because I loved to read and one must guess that those that can read fluently can also spell fluently. But in my case I was as bad as anyone could be. I would mix my Ds and Bs up and I could not remember the way words were spelled. I made silly mistakes all the time and the spelling monster made sure to make fun of me every time this happened. When I was younger I had imagined it as a huge six feet tall grotesque monster with words as his mouth and eyebrows. Letters as his eyes and ears the rest of his body were made up of words and punctuation marks.
He would creep up on me while I was doing homework to enable me to spell the words correctly or so I choose to blame. Every afternoon my mother would force one of my older brothers to help me with my homework. I remember this incident where my brother was helping me write a summary about a book we read in class. He had gone over with me about a million times how to spell the word “because” he covered the paper and asked me to spell it out loud. I murmured some letters “B…E…I…” the spelling monster began to laugh and yelled “Bee… Bee… hahahaha.” My brother slammed the books and yelled “I can not believe you are this stupid!”
My mother heard us from the kitchen and went to see what was going on. my brother told her I was not paying attention and that I was wasting his time. She was tired and frustrated her immediate reaction was to grab my book and sent us both to sleep. But I moved my head while she reached for the book with furry causing her to hit me in the eye which produced a black and blue eye. Try explaining it to the staff and students of my school that it was an accident and that she did not mean it. More embarrassing explaining that it all happened because I could not spell the word “because” at that time. I struggled with this throughout most of my middle school years and was terrified that events like the one would repeat themselves. So I began to write down all the words I had trouble with over and over till they were stuck in my mind.
Along with increasing the amount of books I read I was able to improve my spelling skills. As I grew older and stop putting so much pressure on myself for not being perfect, or good at everything most of these monsters including “The spelling monster” disappeared. I began to take responsibilities of my failings instead of blaming others. Some still exist within me they are not as vivid or interacting as they were when I was a child but they are there. Each has taught me something different and as childish as it may sound the spelling monster helped build the writer that I am today.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
