DICTIONARY

On those good days when
we were all together for dinner
and Daddy wasn't sounding off about
someone who had done him wrong,
there was conversation.
And inevitably someone,
either myself or my brother,
would utter a word with a tricky spelling.
Daddy loved words.
And he loved spelling.
"How do you spell that," he'd challenge.
"Don't know," we'd say, "how?"
With a mischievous look, Daddy would say,
"how do you think?"
We'd sigh.
(Why are you torturing us when
you know the answer
and could simply tell us?)
"Try," he'd say.
"We don't know."
"Okay, then go get the dictionary."
Groans.
This meant someone, not Daddy,
had to get up and walk a few feet to the bookshelf.
"How are we going to find it in the dictionary
if we don't know how to spell it?"
I don't think he ever answered that,
but it never deflected him.
Before we left that dinner table
we'd know how to spell "judgment."
Or the difference between stationary and stationery.
And a few new vocabulary words
stumbled upon during our search.
Today, as I pull down the "utilities" menu
on my computer,
I wonder how Daddy would have dealt with
Spell Check.


© Ellen Azorin