Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Portland Spelling Bee


My friend Moss, who hasn’t even lived in Portland a year, invited me to come to one of her favorite events: The Portland Spelling Bee. Who knew that right down the street from my house, spelling nerds gathered weekly to down honey margaritas and sweat over pizza and words like saturnine, opacity and empleomania.

Trace signed up for the competition with about 20 other brainiacts. Most of them went out in the first round. Trace was defeated by piteous. Syllogize, suasible, and metivistic brought down others. Adult spellers choked on chrysalis, phaeton, consanguinity and liniment, while somehow the perspicacious persevered, knocking down words like taciturn, plunderbund and adminicle.


Until it was down to two. Molly and Amanda. Amanda in her high heels, pink blouse and black skirt commanded a spelling presence unlike any I had ever seen. She confidently spit out letter after letter, amazing the rapted crowd, conquering words like tergiversate and terdiurnal. I never thought spelling could be so sexy.

But in the end, it was less dynamic Molly who pulled off the victory, going home with a Portland Spelling Bee Champion t-shirt and a hug from Grandfather.

Those of you looking for some fun on a Monday night, be sure to check out the Portland Spelling Bee every Monday at 7pm at Mississippi Pizza.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Spelling is SO sexy!

Grammar can be sexy too!

What if we had bees where we gathered and were given paragraphs with grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors to correct in a timed competition? Not as entertaining to watch and play along, probably. But fun for wordnerds like me!

Anonymous said...

I've always loved spelling..But i think this would have been out of my realm!
Dipstick, you're a very funny woman. I love to read your posts.

(I think I would have needed coffee to organize my brain around all those odd words..But the honey margaritas sound good.)

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