11:11 PM

The year was 2022. She tossed and turned in her bed. The back of her husband's head was dark and comforting. And she knew the kids were safe and sound at their respective colleges. Still though, it was always at 11:11 PM every night when her mind revisited the events of that one day in 1988.

It was the fifth grade spelling bee. One girl had already mispelled a word and was asked to leave the stage. It was now her turn. She stood up and tried to straighten the ruffles in her dress.

"Joy," the principal spoke into the microphone.

"Joy?" she asked.

"Yes, JOY."

Easy, she thought. "J-O-Y. Joy." She sat down, feeling very satisfied with herself.

The principal looked at the card, looked at her, and then turned to a fellow judge. There was murmuring. He went back to the microphone. "I said 'JOIN.' As in, won't you come and join the party."

"Oh," she said. "But I thought I heard you say 'joy.' "

The principal cleared his throat. "If you can't hear the word, then please ask us to use it in a sentence." They allowed her to sit on stage, but nonetheless she received 11th place. 11th out of 12.

So here she was, two Pulitzer Prizes and one National Book Award later, still musing over the incident. 'If I misheard the word,' she reasoned, 'then how was I to know I misheard it? By virtue of mishearing the word, one assumes that what one hears is in fact what they actually heard, not a misheard word.' It was the same question that haunted her every night. She wanted to go to that principal who was no doubt dead by now, and ask him, "If a tree fell in the forest, and no one heard it fall, then how the heck does anyone know a tree fell in the first place if they didn't f-ing hear it?" His tombstone would probably not retort a swift comeback. "Exactly. Of course, the force of this logic escaped you then, didn't it?!" Yet for some reason, the idea of visiting his grave to pose this very question seemed a bit tacky.

It was now midnight, and her mind began to drift to sleep. Until 11:11 PM tomorrow.