*
Predisposition. After the post-classical Latin praedispositio, meaning: a propensity in a person to respond or react in a certain way; a pre-existing tendency to suffer from a disease or medical condition, as in: after my parent’s divorce, my daddy became a man who walked in the rain without an umbrella from his new apartment in the projects to the liquor store a few blocks away, deeper in the projects, explaining that doing so was one of few ways he could get closer to god. Folks dismissed him and said he was faithful to the divine because he was so faithful to the liquor, which turned him into a man who often suffered seizures—delirium tremens—when he went too long without alcohol and needed to borrow five dollars but would gladly accept a pocketful of change to get himself a bottle.
*
The lights on the stage burned our faces as we waited our turns at the microphone. I’d made it three rounds and anticipated the fourth while searching the audience for my family in the dark. I’d expected Granddaddy to whistle between the space in his teeth after each successful round, but Mama probably warned him against it.
Unlike the spelling bees at Lonsdale Elementary and Whittle Springs Middle Schools, the district bee was set up professionally, a legitimate precursor to the Nationals: a table of judges, a pronouncer, and a bell.
Your word is parochial, the pronouncer said.
As soon as I heard it, I was afraid this was the word that would send me out; it would expose me as a fraud. And why would it not? A few weeks before, I was invited along with two other spellers to appear on Channel 10’s Live at Five. The segment showcased us as “masterful spellers,” but the first three words the host asked— cuirassier, eudaemonic, terebinthinate—stumped all of us. But the fourth, xenophobia, I knew exactly how to spell—just like it sounds—I thought. So, I volunteered to spell it. I stared into the camera and pronounced z-e-n-o-p-h-o-b-i-a. The host responded, Ok, so that was another tough one, and decided there was no need to go on any further with the segment.
As I stood on stage contemplating how to spell parochial, I felt I would meet a fate similar to the one I suffered on television.
Who knew where this doubt came from? I was a good speller with an aptitude for memorization. I was certainly not one of those kids who trained for these events, bypassing normal school activities to load up on etymologies or the primary lexical unit of words. Why should I need to know the origins of parochial? Or know that a word that sounds like it begins with z actually begins with x?
Could you use parochial in a sentence? I said.
I don’t recall what sentence he used, but the pronouncer might as well have said: Though devoted to his parochial duties, he found time to begin his principal work, the History of Greece.
I had no idea what this word meant, much less how to spell it. Granddaddy, the king of Scrabble, knew. He’d prove it after the competition was over, as he’d proven his knowledge for so many other words, like chivalric, meaning: of or pertaining to chivalry, as in: Granddaddy sat in a darkened theater, ready to take my place, if he was allowed to save his first-born grandson sweating under the stage lights. Or, telepathic, meaning: he stared with great concentration, willing me to buck up, his competitive streak getting the better of him; like the middle school jocks of Section 8A, he too would have taken a win even by proxy.
Uncle Joe, Granddaddy’s second-to-youngest child, was equally driven. A graduate of Austin-East High School, which Mama also attended, Uncle Joe was a popular scholar-athlete who helped to lead his football team to a State championship when he was only a sophomore, and in his senior year, he was voted Mr. Austin-East by the entire student body. As I struggled with the word, I could almost hear Uncle Joe’s plaintive dern—he wasn’t one to curse— knowing the inevitable loomed. Though, unlike Granddaddy, I couldn’t imagine Uncle Joe wanting to save me from failure. His philosophy was “live and learn,” as in: At least now you know how to spell parochial, he’d later tell me.