The Unbearable Spelling of Bees

I went to my daughter’s school today for the spelling bee. Can you use that last word in a sentence, please? This was asked by kids on words that have no homonyms I know of. And then, my spell-check addiction was called up by a surprising number of words I mentally spelled along with a kid, thought they’d nailed only to hear, ‘I’m sorry, that’s incorrect.’

It is? Control+Z, biatch.

Last year, Em got knocked out in the first round because she stammered, the stage fright. I was prepared this year, knowing that she can spell pretty much anything, including words she doesn’t know the meaning of. She learned where her gastrocnemius was clear back in Kindergarten, still knows it and even knows it as a ‘c’ in it that has no business being there. Even with Latinate words, that’s too much.

But she got to the 9th round this year. Surprising stage poise for a kiddo who freaks out at an audience of two, and the person giving the words was hard to understand. A boy in the opening round was given ‘ear’ and between the distortion on the PA and the fact that he couldn’t believed they’d give him a word so obvious, he spelled ‘E-A-G-E-R’ and was told, ‘I’m sorry, that’s incorrect.’ I don’t believe for a minute that anyone thought he heard ‘ear’ and added a ‘g’ and ‘e,’ but the rules are rules.

The ninth round had four kids left, and the kid before Em blew a word I thought he’d nail. I was surprised, it was a word that would have tripped up the kids to fell yearly. None of them were terrible spellers, they started this affair with the three top contestants in classroom contests.

Em was given ‘photography,’ and she nailed it. Except she started to say the letter ‘f.’ She caught herself, but you could tell what she started to say and the rules are explicit about redoing letters. Even though she said ‘Photography eff... P-H-O-T-O-G-R-A-P-H-Y,’ she was told, ‘I’m sorry, that’s incorrect.’ They were then down to the twosome, the head-to-head to see who gets to perpetuate this misery at a county level next month.

Betweem rounds, disqualified kiddos left the stage and reemerged in the gym, but Em didn’t do the latter. I got worried and it turned out I was right. She was bawling in the hallway abut her miserable failure after placing third in her school. You’d think me and the artist formerly known as Frau Lobster pressured her, which did not happen.

Well, according to Em it kind of did. Last year we drilled her a lot before the bee. It was in part because we knew she stammered when she was nervous, and we thought practice would help. More significantly, it’s just cool to find out your kid can spell words the don’t comprehend. We were at lunch with friends and Em spelled some word about ten times harder than ‘photography’ and Frau Lobster said ‘see, idiots can give birth to geniuses.’ Em was quick to defend me (though I didn’t ‘give birth’ to her), ‘Not, it’s not Daddy’s fault!’

Ahem, teach me to gloat about her brains.

Anyway, kids emerged from the gym and Em was still crying, even as I assured her it was awesome that she was even on the stage, let along that she almost took it all. She is aware that nothing I say can be trusted, and she reacted accordingly. But her classmates were congratulating her and she was still inconsolable. Later, in the truck after I signed her out of Hell, she said none of the kids had any sympathy for her.

Sympathy? That’s because they see you on the bronze-medal dais, and they don’t see where there’s any call for sympathy. Except for the two kids who made it past round nine, you beat them all, where’s the sympathy to come from? Did you show sympathy to the kids you whipped?

But I’m speaking logic to an emotional pre-teen kiddo. It didn’t seem to comfort her that one of the spelling bees I can remember from my childhood ended when I fucked up the word ‘rhythm.’ That’s a word that needs to buy a vowel...