I can still taste a tiny bit of barf creeping up into my throat after misspelling that stupid word in the Detroit News Spelling Bee at Goodale Elementary’s auditorium in 1971. Like Ralph and the flat tire scene in “A Christmas Story,” I said the F-word. But not aloud. A good Catholic girl, I was stoic, polite and thoroughly humiliated. The word, which will forever give me hives, was blossom. I spelled it with a U instead of the second O. Jesus God. “B-L-O-S-S-U-M.” WTH? That was it. I was toast. Take your seat, young lady. No trip to the 45th Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, for you, sister.…