Under Winning's Spell

Do you know how to spell lacerate? You can bet your ass that I do. Some nice guy sitting at a table spelled it aloud to me while I was standing on a stage in a school library. That word, lacerate, landed me 4th place in the regional spelling bee, and knocked me solidly out of the remainder of the competition. A win would have gotten me into the state competition, where I could compete for a chance at the national Bee. The one you can watch on ABC, the one where you see a 5 second clip on every news show once a year of a tiny kid spelling a word few adults have any business knowing how to spell. In other words, glory. So, did a misspelled lacerate cut me like a knife (terrible pun intended)? No. I simply listened, nodded, smiled at my Dad in the audience and took my seat.

Flash back three years, and it was a different story. My elementary school gymnasium, the mild din of parents moving about to find their children, the bursts of laughter and conversation from school kids returning to their classrooms. And the combination of bright lights and tear-streaked eyes blurring the scene as my parents approached me and told me they were proud. I numbly hear their words as they tell me I'd added an extra "r" to the word I was to spell, which seemed an impossibility to me. How had it gone wrong? I knew that word. How could I have possibly misspelled it? How had I lost?

To understand the whole story, we have to go back one year further, when I was in second grade, and told that I was now eligible for the school spelling bee. This was the primary grades bee, which meant that the winner couldn't move on to the regional competition, but there was still a trophy for the winner. A trophy. I hadn't seen it yet, but I knew this was something I wanted. I knew kids who did organized sports, who did martial arts, who had trophies for all kinds of activities that I wasn't involved in, but here was something I could win. I recall an easy written spelling test, and then I was sent home with a list of words from which the spelling bee would pull.

Now, there are a few things to understand here. When you watch the National Spelling Bee on ABC (which I know you do), you see kids hearing unfamiliar words and working through etymologies to try to deduce the spelling. That works and likely is truly necessary at the higher levels of the spelling bee. At the local level, there was simply a list from which words would be randomly chosen for each participant's turn. It's a long list, but it's finite. If you have a good base to begin with, a decent memory, and are willing to put in the time, you can simply learn the entire list. That's item 1. The other thing to know is that my Mom wanted each of us to be successful as we could in all things, but particularly academics. A report card with a B on it meant we were in trouble. We read voraciously. We took trips to educational places, and watched Nature and NOVA on TV. And, lest you get the wrong idea, we also played sports with the neighborhood kids, went to amusement parks, and watched Star Trek on TV, too. But that report card had still better be all A's.

Put those two things together, and my Mom pragmatically decided that the best way to go would be for me to memorize the entire list of spelling words. I had a good vocabulary from reading all the time, so I already knew a significant fraction of the words on the list anyway. From that point it was just a matter of practicing until I had the other words ingrained in my head. So we sat down on the couch, every day after school, she would read a word, and I would spell it. She knew I wanted to win, and looking back, I'm pretty sure she wanted me to win, too. We did this every day from the date the list came home until the day of my first spelling bee. That day was a bit of a nervous blur, but I remember my confidence in every word I received until I was the last one standing. I spelled skiing, and I was handed the most beautiful trophy I'd ever seen. A glimmering golden angel stood atop an ornate pedestal, arms upholding a disc with a bee on it. I had never been prouder of myself.

And every year, that was what we did. We'd get the list, I'd practice every day with my Mom, and eventually we'd get to the spelling bee. When I was older, I'd do my paper route and come home to practice spelling. Some days I'd whine and complain that I didn't want to practice, but my Mom would make me. She believed I could do it, and knew beneath my lazy veneer that I believed it too. In five years, I won three times, lost twice, and made it to regionals once, where, arguably, I also lost. So what was the difference between ending the contest in a blur of tears, and an accepting smile?

In third grade, I don't know what word I misspelled, but I distinctly remember that I knew it when I heard it. If I added an "r," as historians will claim, it was a mistake, a slip. I knew I could have done better, could have gotten it right, could have won. Lacerate, though? Didn't know it. We either hadn't gone over it, or the memorization hadn't stuck. I heard it, realized I didn't know it, and tried my best. I had done all I was capable of and it wasn't enough. Even though it meant I lost, I could accept it.

The real key, of course, is that my Mom was proud of me either way. To her, that huge difference between the two losses simply didn't exist. She didn't care that one time I made a simple mistake and the other time I just didn't know the word. She had seen the work I had put in and my excitement at a contest I could be competitive in, and she had encouraged me. To her, all of it was me doing my best, not whether or not I hoisted the trophy at the end of the day. It took me some time to see that, but I'm glad I experienced it all: the wins, the devastating losses, and the acceptance. You can do your best and sometimes it will go your way, and sometimes it won't. That's easy to understand. But knowing not to beat yourself up for a little error that kept you from the glory, and knowing that that is still giving your best? That's a valuable lesson.

And it might have been a good lesson for Malik and Arik Soong, the main antagonists for this week's batch of Star Trek episodes. In this case, #99 on the list was a three-parter, so I'll be talking about those. In this trilogy of episodes we have another parent who wants the best for his kids, but in this case he gets things kind of mixed up about what that all really means.That message gets majorly warped when his son misunderstands the concept, and things just go from bad to worse. But I'm probably getting ahead of myself.

97) ST Enterprise: Borderland. ZOMG, it's Brent Spiner! I believe that's the proper response on seeing the first few scenes of this episode. This time playing Arik Soong, great-great-grandfather or so to Dr. Noonien Soong, inventor of Data. He seems a little more ill-tempered than his descendants, and this time he's all about genetic engineering, making superhumans. Of course, that's illegal, but some of his "prior work" has escaped and is gallivanting around the galaxy stealing Klingon Birds of Prey. Whew! What a setup! Throw in a trip to the Orion planet (scantily-clad green women), lots of action sequences, and a bit of moralizing about genetic engineering, and this is an action-packed episode. I liked it. It sets the stage well for what might be to come while being exciting enough to keep your interest. I could see how Soong thinks of the "augments" as his children, and I could believe his somewhat rash behavior as a dad who just wants to corral his kids before they get into trouble. Dang kids. 8/10.

97 again) ST Enterprise: Cold Station 12. Now here's where things start to get really interesting, where Soong realizes his kids may have gone a little off-message with his experiments to make them superior to everyone else. You see, if they buy into that a bit too much, they might start to find non-augmented people disposable, which certainly doesn't seem to have been Soong's intent. In this episode we visit Cold Station 12, where many more genetically modified embryos are being kept. Through tracking efforts that almost strain credulity, the Enterprise manages to follow, and an intense standoff ensues. Here's where Dr. Soong starts to see just how twisted Malik's ideas have gotten after a lifetime of being told he's superior to everyone else, and you can start to see doubts creep in. And when he learns the truth about the one augment whose modifications didn't really take, you see him less as the villain and more as someone who might be about to realize he's inadvertently created a monster. Spiner does a great job expressing those feelings while his character tries to keep on a veneer of control and smug superiority, which is right in character with the Soong we've seen so far. Oh, and the ending of this episode/start of the next is just awesome. 8/10.

97 once more) ST Enterprise: The Augments. Ok, so without giving any details away, the first sequence of this episode was incredible. After that, things slowly unravel and the start of an awesome trilogy peters out in a fairly predictable way. Where the prior episode hinted at some level of nuance and character evolution, the finale decides to split everything into black-and-white, have people make uncharacteristically stupid decisions, and finally end the episode with foreshadowing that has all the subtlety of a photon torpedo to the head. In short, the bad guys get badder, and the most interesting character (Soong) goes from a conflicted father to a 1-dimensional dictator who is constantly snapping out orders and ultimatums. It's not at all how I would have ended this trilogy, but the first few scenes and a few good moments here and there save it from a lower rating. Trying to avoid spoilers, that's probably about all I can say about this ep. 6/10.

Dr. Soong wanted his kids to be the best, not just the best they could be, but literally the best humans that ever existed. Unfortunately he seems to have focused on the physical and ignored the emotional and empathetic. I don't think he would have accepted one of his augments misspelling a word they definitely knew by heart. And just like I misconstrued what was an acceptable outcome at the spelling bee, Malik way misconstrued what his being genetically enhanced allowed him to do in life. That's a recipe for trouble, and for a pretty good group of Enterprise episodes. Because as intense as spelling bees can get, it does appear that the consequences of misunderstandings are higher in interstellar conflict than they are in spelling. Who knew?