During my final two years at Hexter Elementary School, I was a member of the “accelerated class.” This is where teachers—using criteria of which I was not aware—determined who the smart kids were and put them together. The curriculum may have been slightly tougher and the teachers more demanding. Yes, I was in 7B and had been in 6B the year before, but I was among the dumbest of the smart kids. I especially felt this when we were in a math course. Most of my fellow students were on a higher plane, and my grades in such a cohort were nothing special. Kathy Downer, Mary Guilloud, Jim Shiner, Don Chandler and others shone considerably brighter than I. Any education professional objectively looking at my performance in that class would have concluded, “He’s no genius.”
But he can spell
However, I seemed to excel in one thing: spelling. Given the fact that I have spent most of the past 30 years working with words, this would appear to be no great surprise. Spelling came easy, and I won our class spelling bee in early 1966. A school-wide contest followed. The winner, the Hexter spelling champion, would go on to face other such students to determine who was the best speller among Dallas’ elementary schools. And from there, he or she would take part in a state contest and finally the big one in Washington, D.C.
One of the teachers, Mrs. Dixon, was in charge of the Hexter spelling bee. If you missed a single letter of a word, you were out. No second chances. One by one, other students were told to have a seat. Eventually, it came down to me and a 6th grade girl named Laura Smith. Perhaps a dozen times Mrs. Dixon gave us words and we spelled them correctly—Laura, me, 
Laura, me and so forth. The classroom where this event took place was packed with teachers, students and even a few parents. Then Mrs. Dixon called upon me to spell “quorum.” This was a word with which I was not familiar. I should have stalled for time by asking her to give its definition (the minimum number of members of a deliberative assembly needed to conduct the business of that group), but I failed to do so. On a wing and a prayer, I tried and got it wrong.
Pressure on Laura
Mrs. Dixon then screwed up! She announced that Laura was Hexter’s spelling bee champion. Not so fast, I said. She has to spell it right, according to the rules. She concurred and all heads turned toward Laura, who to her everlasting credit did not hesitate: q-u-o-r-u-m. With that she was truly and officially the best speller in our school. I do not know how Laura did in the city competition or whether she went to state and nationals.
But the story is not quite over. Laura and I later attended Hill Junior High School, and whenever we saw each other we joked about “that word.” Then it was on to Bryan Adams High School, and again it was the same. Many times I asked her, “Laura, how do you spell ‘quorum?’” and she always got it right. During four years on the sprawling University of Texas campus, we sometimes saw each other and you can be assured that “quorum” came up every time. After graduation, we both stayed in Austin and I would bump into her now and then.
Need I say what we discussed?
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