For most of us English is a sentence (buh dum bum). In school we learned the basics followed by their 6,534 exceptions. We discovered, for instance, that "i" goes before "e" except after "c," then immediately took off to SCIENCE.
In sixth grade I entered the Wildwood Elementary Spelling Bee and in the final round misspelled "lenient," which does not, for the record, end in "-ant."
I cried myself raw on the merry-go-round, shouting at the heavens: L-e-n-i-E-n-t, l-e-n-i-E-n-t... My shrink still enjoys the irony.
In the wake of that sinister day, I pledged to memorize every word in the dictionary, beginning with the a's.