M.I.S.S.I.S.S.I.P.P.I
Horn Lake MS

Horn Lake, Mississippi

I blame the title on Matthew Yasui. I haven’t talked to Matthew since I was 6. Grand times were had in Miss. Norem’s Grade 1 class at Nellie McClung.

We were only a couple of weeks into the year when Matthew came up to my friend and I and declared “Guess what I can spell?” to which I am sure we both said “what?” and he started repeating, “M.I.S.S.I.S.S.I.P.P.I”. But it wasn’t just the letters. Oh no. There was intonation. So it sounded more like this, “m.i.S.S.i.S.S.i.P.P.i”

Of course this then became a spelling challenge (because naturally all you can do at 6 is build the most ridiculously awesome slides for marbles and spell random words). I countered back, “I bet I can spell that too!” He responded “I bet you can’t!” To which I responded “m.i.S.S.i.P.P.i.S.S.i” That’s right people. Welcome to Missippissi (I now want you to say that outloud). To which Matthew responded with “Nah. Uh. You spelt it wrong. m.i.S.S.i.S.S.i.P.P.i” This likely continued for the next three minutes until Miss. Norem declared it was snack time and all spelling challenges were called off.

Naturally I can not say my spelling has improved since my ‘Missippissi’ incident. My understanding of the word however has increased greatly. I now know where it is. I now know there is a river. I now know Huck Finn meandered down it on a raft. I did not learn in my satire class in first year of University what was ironic about this book however – this statement is a tangent.

Looking at the map of Arkansas and Tennessee a couple of days before flying down for the FIND workshop it dawned on me how close I would be to Mississippi. Of course I had to go! So before picking the marvelous Kat Braman up from the airport on Tuesday I crossed into the great land of ‘Missippissi’ and documented all it’s wonder. It looked something like this…

Don’t worry. I went back to Mississippi a couple days later. It was much more glorious than Mrs. Winner’s Chicken and Biscuits.

So began my southern US adventures.