Simply Spellbinding

Mr. Madison: You remember that spelling bee you won in the 1st grade?

Billy: Oh no, you didn't!

Mr. Madison: Rock? "r-o-k"?

Billy: Yea, so what's your point?

Mr. Madison: r-o-C-k!

Billy: Ohh! The "C" is silent.

Last night in the national spelling bee Kavya Shivshankar was able to spell (Drama take note here) V-I-C-T-O-R-Y! I only caught the final round of the Spelling Bee, but once I laid down on the couch and J-Roll had switched from LeBron to Kavya during a commercial break, I knew that we weren't switching back. LeBron may be "The King," but he had nothing on Kavya last night. She sure as hell was the spelling "Princess" of my dreams. This girl could spell words like Laodicean and Gyascutus (as one newspaper stated: only slightly harder words to spell than her last name). I have no idea what these words mean nor do I believe they are truly English. Honestly have you ever gone down the street and said to a passerby, "Hello goodfellow! Have you read 'The Stranger?' That man is a laodicean, but I figure he is more real to our society than a gyascutus on capital hill! Har Har Har"? Hell no. You'd get put in the insane asylum or deported for saying shit like that. On top of that this goddess of gab spelling knew the root word (latin or not) and was able to do this magical thing with her hands. Every word she wrote out at least 4 times in her hands making it look like she was either Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers asking for more crabcakes and a shit or she was casting a spell (man, I'm clever) on the audience (mainly me ... man, that wickedly wild wordsmithy wench has got my number).

Besides Kavya, I feel like I should mention a little about the rest of the Bee. As each contestant got up they were allowed to ask a variety of questions about the word they were given to spell. These questions, if not phrased properly, were denied by the judges. They really reminded me of that dead guy in I, Robot when he would constantly reply, "My responses are limited. You must ask the right question." These judges were not dead though, but they sure acted like it with their monotone better than thou attitudes. The thing is I would totally act like that if I had all the answers in front of me on a computer screen. And don't even get me started on the fact that when any contestant got a question wrong ... the bell lady would come in. The bell lady, a lady who gets paid (I repeat GETS PAID!!!) to ring a bell at the Spelling Bee. She would pause for just the right amount of time to create that anxiety in the air. Maybe give the little guy a little hope ... then DING! So sorry ... how unfortunate. She would hit that thing like she was God closing the book of life on someone. There must be hundreds of these bell ladies across the U.S. at every state spelling bee ... how I envy their jobs.

Also I should mention that the Bee was sponsored by Scripps, which was going to give out more than my annual salary to the winner along with a trophy. I did NOT need to know this. I work all year long and every year some 8th grade 12 year old kid who hasn't even hit puberty yet makes more than I do AND gets a huge engraved trophy!!!! WTF!!! I am so pissed at my parents for not home schooling me and beating me when I misspelled words (you know that Asian kid who got fourth place was going to get it when he got home). And while I'm at it screw you Microsoft Word for making me so goddamn lazy! From now on I am going to ignore your red underlines just out of spyte (You see what I did there? Yeah! Take that society).

Teacher: Spell "couch".

Little girl: Couch. C-O-W...

Billy: No!!!! Ha, ha.

Teacher: [to little girl] No, I'm sorry, that's not right. [to Billy]

Teacher: Well, Billy, if you spell this correctly you pass second grade.

Billy: Couch. C-O-R, uh, ARE you going to the mall later today?

Teacher: No I'm not goin to the mall, keep spelling, mister!

Billy: C-O-U-C-H!

Teacher: Correct!

Billy: I AM THE SMARTEST MAN ALIVE!