LJ and the Bee

MJ dragged me to the regional spelling bee that was held at the downtown library this morning. The winner gets to go to Washington and compete in the national spelling bee. I didn’t want to go because it’s a spelling bee and spelling bees are boring. But it was kids pushing themselves to be excellent so it took about two seconds before I was all in. MJ had to stop me from mouthing and nodding along with the spellers, which was much harder than it sounds. The kids were from the fourteen surrounding counties and could be separated into two groups: those that were taking it seriously and those that weren’t. The kids who weren’t taking it seriously stepped up to the mike and spelled the word. If they knew it great, if not they took a wild guess. The kids who were taking it seriously had a process: ask to have the word repeated, ask the definition, ask for alternate pronunciations, ask for the origin, spell the word. I liked both groups. As the competition started I was surprised when the first misspelled word came in the first round and was “hyphen”. I can spell that. Then I saw the way the kid bailed from the stage and realized that these kids were dealing with some pressure. I knew I was emotionally invested when a kid misspelled Hibachi and I got angry. I got angry because she didn’t use a process to figure out what where the word came from. She just took a guess. There were “O’s” and “T’s” involved. But what upset me more is that Hibachi is not an English word, and it’s a name, a proper noun. This is a major bug up my butt with spelling bees. If it’s in the dictionary it’s fair game. That’s dumb. Under these rules d’oh and jiggy are perfectly fine. What’s a kid supposed to do if jalapeño comes up? N and ñ are not the same letter; ñ doesn’t exist in English. Yet the hot pepper is in the dictionary. This is a key reason I’m not excited about LMJ competing in one of these things. Another key reason is the randomness of the words selected. One kid will get vorlage and have to correct the game show host’s pronunciation before she busts it all up in his grill and the next kid will get quell. I was on the edge of my seat and I had never met any of the competitors. I’ll be much happier with my baby girl getting involved in Jiu-jitsu. Is that Jiu-jitsu or Jujutsu?