excited. E-X-C-I-T-E-D. excited.

anyone who knows me, knows that there are two things i can't get enough of. one of them is salty snacks, and the other is spelling. someone who knows this better than anyone, is rebekah (whom you may remember from "pour some sugar cookies on me"). she shares my feelings toward spelling (her feelings toward salty snacks however, are not quite as strong), and when we lived together, this lead to many hours of mocking the spelling/grammar errors of magazine writers, friends, strangers, etc. so when rebekah was given the opportunity to be an official "word-reader" for the spelling bee in her district (which took place on wednesday), she did what any good friend would do, and shared her good fortune with me.


as you can see by the above picture (look closely), not everyone takes spelling as seriously as rebekah and i do. but we were nonetheless E-X-C-I-T-E-D (which by the way, was the word i misspelled in my school spelling bee in 3rd grade, earning me third place, behind chris eide and marc czspreghy) to do our job and hopefully have a positive impact on the future of spelling.



the first thing we did when the kids arrived at the bee, was arbitrarily choose favorites. i chose a scrappy-looking 3rd grade boy who i thought had the look of a natural speller. he ended up getting out in the first round on the word "burrito", which he spelled B-R-R-E-T-O. i guess sometimes that scrappy look can also mean "better at sports". Rebekah's pick was a cute little 3rd grade girl in a pink skirt, who looked so nervous that she was probably minutes away from throwing up. she lasted a few rounds, but looked a little relieved when she finally got out.

so my big fear throughout the spelling bee, was that i would mispronounce a word. the words were a lot harder than you'd think (ephemeral, eiderdown, gestalt) for elementary school kids. in order to A-C-C-O-M-M-O-D-A-T-E the speller, when i pulled the word "corporal" out of the basket, i decided i should over-pronounce it. well, the stupid kid spelled it wrong anyway, he got out, and we went on with the bee. a few words later, his mom approached one of the judges, with the complaint that i had pronounced the word "cuh-PER-ul". clearly this mom doesn't realize the amount of respect i have for the art of spelling. plus, that's just not a word. so rebekah and i both felt this was simply a case of a mom not being able to admit that her son wasn't the speller she thought he was. The pronunciation scandal turned out to be minor, since the whole bee was being taped for that very reason. but still, it added another element of excitement.



so the poor spellers were weeded out, one by one, and eventually there were three talented ones left. rebekah and i both admitted to each other that we didn't want it to end, and we considered making up really easy words, just to keep the bee going for a while. i mean, this could end up being a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and i would hate for it to only last for one hour. when the winning speller emerged, it was a 4th grade girl who had apparently asked her teacher for the word list on the first day of school, so she could start studying for the spelling bee. bless her heart. rebekah and i are planning on going to the state spelling bee to support her. and also because we can't get enough of spelling bees. and also we're going to try to see if they need some volunteer word-readers, or maybe a J-U-D-I-C-I-A-L (the word rebekah got out on, in her elementary school spelling bee) position, now that we have some experience. i'm not kidding about that.

but wait, there's more! after the bee, i stopped by rebekah's house, where there were a dozen of The Best Cookies In All of The Land waiting for me. she had gone to st. george the previous weekend, and brought them back for me, and some for heidi. i can't think of a better way to top off the whole experience.