SPELLBOUND

The Scripp’s National Spelling Bee was televised live last Friday night and I, having lettered in letters during my teen years, had to show off my spelling prowess to Big Bore. That was until I found out that every damned word was foreign: ochidore, stromuhr, metateriole, appoggiatura, pococurante. I kept missing word after word after word.

“What’s with this?” I asked the television. “I’ve never heard of ANY of these words!” I consulted my Webster’s Dictionary, 11th edition, and very few of them were even listed. This so-called National Spelling Bee had a definite international sound.

Now, I don’t profess to know every word in the dictionary, but I do consider myself to have a voluminous vocabulary. I didn’t get a degree in teaching English to 15-year-olds for nothing, you know. But these words were TOTALLY out of my realm.

And that’s not all that agitated me about the National Spelling Bee. The host was Chris Hanson, for gosh sakes!! Where might you have heard this name or seen his face, you ask? He’s also the lousy host of that highly educational ABC series known as “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette.” What qualifies him to even squat in the same room as these brainiac kids? Well, he had a “color commentator” sidekick who was a national spelling champ a few decades back. I can’t recall his name, but he provided in-depth insight into the word play, such as:

“I think the third syllable of this word might throw her, Chris,” and “That second vowel is a little tricky." Dynamic stuff. What’s more, the whole routine of introducing the spellers and the actual attempts at spelling the words was a snore fest. It went kind of like this:

“Our next contestant, from Kansas, is The Flaming Bore. She’s 60-years-old, enjoys gardening and photography, and her favorite word is triskaidekaphobia.”

“Flaming Bore, your word to spell is flibbertigibbety.”

“Flibbertigibbety?”

“Yes, flibbertigibbety.”

“Flibber?”

“Yes.”

“…tigibbety?”

“That’s right.”

“Are there any alternate pronunciations?”

“No, there are not any alternate pronunciations.”

“Flibbertigibbety. Hmmm. What is the country of origin?”

“It’s from Middle English, 15th century.”

“Could you use it in a sentence, please?”

“Yes. Because The Flaming Bore was insecure and flighty about spelling the word flibbertigibbety, she became flibbertigibbety.”

“Flibbertigibbety. Am I pronouncing it correctly?”

“Yes, you are. Flibbertigibbety.”

And it goes on and on like this until the flibbertigibbety contestant finally gives it a verbal stab, for better or for worse. This makes chess look like a contact sport.

Finally, after an hour or so, a winner was declared. She was a little gal from Ohio. I can’t pronounce, let alone spell, her name. It always seems like the winners in the National Spelling Bee have a “country of origin” other than the United States and they can correctly manipulate those letters off their talented tongues better than anyone who was Born in the USA and has lived here for six decades, like me.

I checked the Internet to find out if the words in the National Spelling Bee have always been this ridiculousy difficult. The word that won the Bee in 1940 was therapy. How ironic. That’s exactly what I needed after watching this show, now that I have a magnanimous inferiority complex. I think the contest should be renamed the International Spelling Bee for Super Smart Kids Who Don’t Have Anything Else to Do But Learn How to Spell Every Blasted Word in the Universe. Then I won’t feel like such a: d-u-m-b-y, uh, d-u-m-m-e-e, er, d-u-h-m-i, or is it d-u-m-m-y. Whatever.