the day the alphabet song failed me

It was an easy going morning. I was about my usual business of getting ready for work and had poured myself a bowl of generic Rice Chex over a small pile of diced peaches. I drizzled some honey on the top and poured a mixture of soy milk and cow milk over the bunch (some kinds of soy milk are not my favorite so I like to mix in some usual milk for flavor).

As I got busy masticating, I decided to occupy my mind with a little game we used to play all the time as kids. We called it "The Alphabet Game." As we ate we would look all over the cereal box to find all the letters in the alphabet, starting from A and working all the way down to Z. This particular day the soy milk bottle looked promising so I was playing with that.

A is in "taste"
B is in "build"
C, D, E...
This game is so fun and easy.

H is in "thick"
I is too
J...took a little more effort

Before I knew it I had found myself at Q. Now any of you who have played this particular brand of "The Alphabet Game" will know that Q is not the easiest letter to find, and any of you who speak English will know that it is likely to be followed in a word by the letter U. So I went searching for the Q. I looked all up and down one side and finally found it in "quality" (I recommend finding the "high quality" declaration should you ever attempt this pastime). Then what's next...

I drew an absolute blank. I could not for the life of me think of anything to follow Q other than U...
I resorted to the alphabet song. I sang to myself, "A B C D E F G...L M N O P, Q U..." that's not right. So I sang it again...I got the same answer! Oh my goodness! Even the alphabet song could not save me now! My mind was determined to believe that U followed Q and I could not convince it otherwise.

Let me tell you, I felt pretty silly that morning. Me, a grown woman of 29, a college graduate, a consistent scholarship awardee, a prized employee, and tutor of children, sitting there, singing the alphabet song to myself (out loud even) and still unable to get it right. Humility of humilities.

I did eventually come up with R, but it seemed to take me forever and even then it didn't feel right. I laughed about that all day. I guess we each have something that we will just never be super good at and mine happen to be spelling and the alphabet.