Outnumbered Two to One

After braving morning rush-hour traffic yesterday (I’m so grateful I don’t commute anymore), my tweeny-bopper and I (along with a surprisingly accommodating toddler) made it to the county wide spelling bee she qualified for late last month.

It was a pretty big event, roughly about 200 kids competed in a written competition for about 25 spots in the oral bee. They allowed parents and teachers to sit, while 50 words were pronounced for the participants who had to scribble them down on a sheet. My charge in the mean time was keeping a two year old from shrieking his way through all 50 words.

Luckily I had pennies and a baggie of cereal at my disposal, not to mention threats that the authorities were going to whisk him away if he got too loud. I got the occasional glares from various corners of the aisle I was sitting in, but what kind of mom would I be if I hadn’t learned to ignore those by now.

The spelling words started off harmless enough - “ballerina, hyphen, caboose“. Then gradually built up to “kahuna and hygiene“. The sentence they used for “quell” made me chuckle just a bit since it involved storm troopers and rebels, I’m not kidding. Later there was “gulag and boysenberry“, “ubiquitous and commensurate“, not to mention a couple I still can’t identify, something that sounded like “car” but wasn’t and a word I can only identify as “bat-ter-soy“. They wrapped it up with “mukhtar, pfeffernuss, and hoomalimali” just for fun, I think.

In the end my little girl was not in the top 25 selected for round 2. But she wasn’t terribly disappointed, she got out of school for the day, got BK’s for lunch, and didn’t have to deal with any homework all afternoon.

She also spent the rest of the day proclaiming, “I’m still a winner!” to anyone who’d listen.  Me and her dad both agreed. Her teenage sister…not so much.