My Prowess with Words, 2

[...confirmed to me that I understood this word.  Hah!]

       I suppose it was my fate to make this kind of mistake.  Wasn't it I who sat in the first grade, stared all year at the map in the front of the room, and read the legend underneath:  un-KNIT-ed states?  All year I had this dissonance within me--a little kid of six, "If we're supposed to be the you-NIGHT-ed states, as I've heard, all together and joined, why are we this way, all unravelled as that map says?"