Spell Me

Spell Me

Noel Laflin

June 4, 2015

“Mom!” I shouted for the umpteenth time that afternoon, slumped over the old manual typewriter, stumped as to the spelling of yet another challenging word.

“Yes …,” came a pained response from my mother far down the hallway.

“How do you spell ‘inflammatory’?  Is it with an ‘i’ or an ‘e’ and is it with an ‘m’ or an ‘n’ - and how many ‘m’s’ are in this stupid word anyway?” I hollered.

“Inflammatory begins with ‘in’ and has two m’s,” came the distant, and slightly exasperated reply from another room in the house.

“Thanks,” I mumbled as I made the notation and uncapped the small correction fluid bottle once more.

Minutes later I was at it again, peppering the poor woman with another request in spelling.  It had been going on for hours – days – years.

There was silence this time.  I feared my mother might have either stepped out of hearing range or, God forbid, be stumped for a proper spelling herself.  Now, that would have been a first - and noteworthy unto itself.

But neither assumption was correct, however, as the good woman strode into the room a moment later and gently laid a giant dictionary on the small wooden desk.

“Now, how is that going to be of any help if I don’t even know the proper letter of the alphabet to start my search,” I lamented, instantly distrusting the large book now crowding my small work space.

“Process of elimination,” my mother replied.  “I’ve got work to do. Now, so do you.  You’ll do fine.” And with that, she left the room as I hefted the weighty book into my lap and began my excruciating search for enlightenment.

   

My mother always believed in the teaching of self-reliance.

And in this age of apps, laptops, desktops, mobile devices, and tablets – all of which are available to me and are in constant play – I still keep three or four versions of my old nemesis close.

 

Flipping through the pages not only reminds me of my work at hand, but of the woman who spelled me for so long.

"It's your 100th birthday tomorrow, mom," I just whispered aloud to the ghost standing behind me - the smiling woman watching my fingers move across the keyboard. 

She was proud of the fact that I spelled the word nemesis correctly.