I felt tricked, betrayed, dismissed, and vowed to take the dictionary home to memorize every last syllable. Only, I forgot to take it. My attention span almost immediately was distracted by an impending knowledge of a televised sports game afterward.
It might as well have been a shiny object. To this day sports games still distract me, and because I didn’t take that dictionary home back then, many words still throw me for a doozy. Occasionally some names do too. One I have learned to spell well, though, is a sports athlete named Simmons.