Suffering Contest                        4/18/19

 

A long time ago, a wise woman once told me, “ Life is not a suffering contest. No one wins.” In my youth, during cycles of depression, my misery seemed to feel worse than anything else around me. It was ever more befuddling because on the surface, I appeared to be like just another spoiled prep school brat, automatically on track for college. If nothing else better came along, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Hawaii would be the standard ticket to a suitable state job. According to the college guidance counselor, a womb to the tomb state job with good benefits, lifetime pension and health insurance was almost guaranteed after graduation. In frustrated disbelief each time I changed my major, the counselor would practically beg me, “ Please just pick a major, any major and just graduate.” My ignorant, insecure response was to avoid graduating for as long as possible.

I failed repeatedly when attempting to follow the tried and true academic route of most, assimilated, middle class Japanese Americans. Any youthful opportunity to achieve normal mainstream success eventually led to deep anxiety. I felt compelled, more unconsciously then consciously, to escape from unknown fears and doubts. After fleeting freedom, the jailhouse of insecurities would recapture me, leaving me to plot another way out from a labyrinth of confusion.

From the beginning of my fake college career to its long unsatisfactory end, the successful academic track would elude me. Taking detours and repeated derailments were the norm. So I stopped trying to be like the majority of my peers and sought alternate routes for self-education and maybe even enlightenment. Meanwhile, Mom continued paying for college tuition, apartment rental and car insurance. Like any good dysfunctional family, mother supported my dysfunctional habits of bad relationships, moderate recreational drug use, retail and psychological therapy. She prayed that before she died, I would one day grow up. Until then, Mom and older sister Gwen agreed to support me financially, but not emotionally. Fed up with my obvious deceptions, they continued to send me a hefty allowance until I was 35yrs old. Finally, I got a full time job in San Francisco that could cover rent, public transportation, food and dating. It was affordable back then, to live the life of a dysfunctional lesbian Bohemian in the Gay Mecca of the world, but that’s another story.

Decades prior to reaching adulthood in California, my favorite and earliest memory of public failure was my first and last Spelling Bee contest at Eleele Elementary and Intermediate school. On stage sat a fat, pimpled, menstruating pre-teen girl in the 7th grade. There, I sat with Kotex pad neatly pinned to my plastic panty. I felt maybe I could win, like my older brother Matthews did before me. The paperback Webster’s dictionary under my pillow was so worn from daily memorization, I thought maybe I had a chance.

For a moment, I felt I belonged somewhere, here among my fellow fledgling nerds, seated in a neat nervous row. Myself and a few other students had already won a series of classroom competitions bringing us to this final school elimination contest. The winner of this competition would move on to the Kauai County All School Competition, then on to the State Competition, then ultimately, to the National Competition. This was my first real experience of competitive pressure, since I was fat, clumsy and sucked at sports. I was on my way to scholastic competition and I wanted to win.

In my 7th grade mind, we were dictionary gladiators waiting to slay 5 syllable words in a single stroke of spelling bee brilliance. When I peeked out from the curtains of my imagination and looked out into the audience my courage wavered. I saw a Roman Colosseum packed with spectators eager to point their thumbs down with each misspelled word.

In reality, our tiny school auditorium was filled with students, teachers and most scary of all, mothers. There was Mom in the audience, up front and center. She left work to arrive early and get the best seat. Mom was a proud widow of five smart kids. Every report card from college, high school and elementary school was scotch taped on the refrigerator door of the restaurant kitchen. Every good grade from all five us was bragged about because she worked so hard for us to achieve a better life. My siblings were high achievers and I knew this was my chance to make Mommy proud. She was bedecked and begirdled in her finest dress and costume jewelry. Her hair was coifed into a solid beehive helmet and sheathed in aquanet hairspray. A Warrior Mother, she watched with absolute confidence in her baby daughter who was about to enter her first scholastic battlefield.

To me, Mom stood out among the crowd like a proud woman peacock displaying her glorious feminine aplomb. Mom did not need to be a male to show off her tall tail feathers spread out like a fan of gorgeous fearlessness. She herself was a smart, attractive, hard working, successful widow and she was not about to hide it. I wished she could stand behind me and make me fearless too.

To calm my nerves, I closed my eyes and remembered the midnight scrabble games with my siblings home from school for summer vacation. All those fun and torturously competitive late night scrabble games taught me to love reading the dictionary and memorize big words. My siblings had prepared me for my first Spelling Bee Contest and I was going to make Mommy even prouder when she watched me win my first real competition.

So guess wot? I wen loze. Shuckz! Mom rarely said a dirty word ever. She also rarely scolded and never spanked me. So when I lost, I spelled shuckz, not shit, in invisible loser letters across my loser forehead. I couldn’t look up from my lonely loser seat until the audience had left including Mom. Her stylish helmet hair still held high, she returned to her kitchen and apron, believing I would win the next battle.

For days and days, I would replay the loser word over and over again in my head. I mentally watched myself on the stage of my 7th grade melodrama misspell “anxious.” When my name was called to step up to the microphone, I stood there trying to avoid Mom’s ruby red smile and thick mascara stare. Quaking in my clean rubber slippers and new muumuu Mom had bought for me, my armpits were sticky and I worried if my Kotex pad smelled. At the microphone, my bones started to crumble and the pages of the dictionary started to fall from my memory to the floor where I wanted to be buried under.

While my confidence fell apart, the word to be spelled was repeated by the announcer twice before I tried to spell it. “Anxious, Anxious,” reverberated in my swelling brain. Part of the brain knew how to spell it with an “x,” obviously, but the part of the brain controlling speech said, “Anxious, A-N-K-I-O-U-S.” Instantly, the loser bell rang,”Ding!” It was over. I lost my chance to make Mom a prouder peacock, strutting her stuff at the restaurant.

At home, I was glad Mom was working, as usual, so I could be alone with my shame. I watched weekend cartoons on TV. My normal TV shows vanished from the screen and I watched a black & white, giant cartoon letter “K,” fill the screen with big boots on its bottom legs chasing me around and kicking me in the butt, screaming “Anxious! With an X,” in perfect standard English. “ Shuckz! Wit one K!, I shouted back in pidgeon english, “Shuckz! Wit one K!”