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Latin Lover Catherine Price -- 10/11/2004  When the makers of the documentary Spellbound asked Jonathan Knisely to describe how winning the 1971 National Spelling Bee changed his life, he paused before responding.“I don’t think it really helped me in my nascent love life,” he finally said, staring at the camera through thick glasses. “I think having won something like that could be regarded as being a significant liability.” As someone who subscribes to a word-a-day email list called “Doctor Dictionary,” I can identify with him. I read grammar books for fun and, back in the early glory days of AOL, I used to surf through teenchat rooms, correcting the spelling of people who misused contractions. I am, in other words, a huge nerd. Of course, growing up, there were warning signs. I have a distinct 2nd grade memory of walking down 67th Street with my grandmother, cursing the fact that I had misspelled “business” in our class bee. “Bus-I-ness,” repeated to myself. “I should have known that ‘bus-ness’ was too easy!” From there, it was a slippery slope, a slope that quickly became a landslide when I started taking Latin in sixth grade. As a child with pink and blue glasses attached to my head by a librarian’s chain, two braids, and an iron-on decal t-shirt featuring Elvis in a white pantsuit under the title “The King,” I took to Latin like a cheerleader to the football team. I was worse than math club and band camp combined. It helped that I was competitive. My obsession with a computer game called “Pipe Dream” (which necessitated building complex, looping systems of sewage pipes before being overtaken by toxic sludge) was trumped only by my love of the imperfect tense. When my beloved sixth grade teacher, Mr. Schroeter, began timing us to see who could recite noun-endings the fastest, I was the undisputed champion in all five cases. In retrospect, my domination over my classmates probably had less to do with innate talent than the fact that no one else was spending their after-school hours strategizing about neuter nouns. But, I still felt a thrill at my accomplishments. I may not have had a boyfriend, but no one could mess with my pluperfect. While most of my other classmates opted out of Latin after our mandatory three years, I stuck with it through high school, mostly because my teachers were crazy. Mr. Fornara was a six-foot-five aspiring opera singer who later took several years off to play Old Deuteronomy in the German version of Cats. Ms. Rayhill was a twenty-six year old marathon runner who had an open crush on Aeneas, wore red leather boots to school and went to classes at her gym with names like “Abs, Thighs and Gossip.” Mr. Tobin burned candles on the Ides of March, was convinced of the healing power of blue-green algae, wore sunglasses indoors, and truly believed that he was the living embodiment of the Roman poet, Catullus. These people were my high school idols. Surprisingly, I fit in well enough in the ivory tower of my New York City prep school. But once I’d graduated from college and was thrust into the “real world,” I realized that, after seventeen years of education, I had no real marketable skills. What was I supposed to do? Become, like, a Latin teacher? end of page 1 [ 1 ] read more ... [ 2 ][ 3 ][ 4 ] |
