bee season

I love the National Spelling Bee. Love it, love it, love it. The first time I watched was about 10 years ago and there was this girl who was the living embodiment of Mary Catherine Gallagher, the "Saturday Night Live" character. She would lean into the microphone and breathe heavily. She would ask every possible question, repeatedly. At one point, I said to Archie, "I swear, she's going to ask if they can spell it for her!" She didn't win that year, but she won the next year. I was in love with the dorky kids who spent all their time learning root words and languages of origin and just being geeky spellers.

From that moment on, I hoped that some year a kid would ask, "Can you spell that?" Last year, someone did. Fantastic! There was the year a kid passed out cold on the stage. Scary! Then he got up and spelled his word correctly. Amazing!

This year the big drama is that a girl was put out of the competition, but then the judges reviewed the spelling of the word and realized they had added an additional letter. She had spelled the word correctly and was put back in to the next round. Oooo!

I need something new to look forward to. I think it would be hilarious if a kid had no idea how to spell a word and just decided to go out blazing by spelling a very offensive word. Wouldn't that be super funny? "The word is [insert impossible to spell word here]." And the kid spells, "C-o-c-k-s-u-c-k-e-r."

I'm thinking that will never happen.

But it would be hilarious.