once (was Spelling Bees)

[Amy Z]

Jennifer Piersol wrote:
> 
> I will never forget the word "once", which I spelled in the first 
> grade spelling bee as "wunce".  It was my first time up there, and 
it 
> was my first word in the contest, and I was just SO heartbroken that 
> tears didn't stop for a few hours - and renewed after I got home and 
> my mom asked me how it went.

The teacher and writer about learning John Holt tells the story of a 
little girl who burst into tears when she learned how "once" was 
spelled.  It wasn't even a spelling bee--she was just thrown into 
despair by the sheer incomprehensibility of English spelling.

Amy Z
patting Jen sympathetically through cyberspace