Spelling Bee

On Wednesday evening, Peter participated in his school spelling bee. He might have told me about it beforehand, but I didn't remember. It was that day as we were walking home from school that he dashed over to talk to a friend and then came back to tell me, "The spelling bee is tonight at 6 in the library."

"Six? That's dinner time!" I said. And usually Hannah and John's play rehearsal get out at six. And Wednesdays there is youth activities at the church. I'm not a person who likes having unexpected events thrown on me at the last minute. I was not thrilled.

But we went anyway. Hannah and John got out of rehearsal early so that wasn't an issue. I got dinner mostly ready and John agreed to watch it. Peter and I set off for the school.

There were only about twelve contestants in all, I don't know how many students qualified, but there were a lot of empty seats. Peter was contestant #17, but was only about 8th in line. There was a practice round, and then the competition began. Peter stayed in through several rounds, gradually inching his way up towards the first seat. He spelled "banana" and was disappointed when someone else got to spell "monkeys". He spelled "married", "contestant",  and several other words. In the end, he got out trying to spell "clodhopper". (He spelled it "claudhopper".) By that point, he was in third place and now he gets to go on to the district spelling bee which will be in a couple weeks. Maybe he'll actually practice for that one!