My German Tutor is pretty cool. Originally from Rheinland-Pfalz, she's been living in the States for probably 10 years now. She comes once a week and we talk for an hour, sometimes discussing short stories she assigns me or just chatting about anything. I'm always interested to hear which aspects of American Culture seem strange to her. Yesterday we came upon the topic of the Spelling Bee. Spelling Bees do not exist in Germany although they do have some pretty intense national oratory contests for school children. The Frau thought this was a rather strange and pointless exercise. True, but I told her that the Spelling Bee is a classic American event, and that if you ask any adult, I bet they can still remember which word they went out on and tell you about it.
So how about it?
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6 comments:
my skool felt that speling b's wood only re-sult in deminished self-esteam and inkreased compitishen so we didn't half any.
I can't remember words I went out on because there were so many. I only remember winning a spelling bee in 5th grade with bibliography ... I was in shock!
We didn't have spelling bees ... however I remember being eliminated from my Geography Bee on a question where the answer was the Adriatic Sea ...
Damn, the Adriatic ...
Persnickety.
I objected afterwards that I didn't really think that was a word.
Only in Texas I tell you!
See, y'all remember. Here's mine: omission. Failing to ask for a sentence or anything I spelled it o-m-i-t-i-o-n. Not that there is any excuse for that.
I guess I cheated: I didn't go out but rather quit while I was ahead. I won within my junior high school and then refused to go on to the citywide competition or whatever it was. I was totally shy and not the sort of kid to voluntarily accept the opportunity of screwing up in front of a bunch of strangers. Also, I felt bad about beating my ex-best-friend, who went out last.
Still, I do remember being glad that I hadn't been asked to spell "toboggan," which is the word that wiped out the third-to-last contestant in our bee.
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