mad spelling skillzzz

At one point in our journey down ML (see previous post), we listened to some audio tapes of the kids when they were small. We lived in Nacogdoches at the time, and the deep East Texas accents are thick. On one tape I interviewed Jacob. He was three months into an accelerated kindergarten class at a private school, and we wanted to show off his progress. The conversation went something like this:

“Jacob, how do you spell ‘like’?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do.”

“L-I . . . A-K?”

“Noooo. Try again.”

“L-I-O-K?”

I’m laughing now. “Nooo . . .”

“L-I-K-O?”

“No, Jacob. It’s L-I-K-E.”

We left spelling and moved on to a few twangy questions about Thanksgiving, which Jacob answered like a countrified champ.

A couple days after listening to the tapes we all piled into the van to go somewhere. Grace turned to Jacob and said, “Hey, Jacob. Spell ‘like.'”

He shot her a you’re-not-the-boss-of-me glare and answered, “M-A-D.”

Ha! Don’t be messin’ with Jacob, y’all. He rulez the skool.