There’s a total spelling scam going down at my daughter’s school.  It’s called Spelling Sparkle.  Here’s how it works:  The kids line up and then are given one of that week’s spelling words.  Each child-in-line gives ONE letter of the word and when the word is spelled, the next student in lines shouts, “Spelling Sparkle!” and the student behind them is out.  WTF?

Total scam.  You don’t even have to be a terrible speller to get “out” in Spelling Sparkle.

When I was in school you were “out” of Spelling Bee if you didn’t know how to spell a FULL word.  You, yourself, lived and died in Spelling Bee on your own merit.  Or in my case, on whether or not you could read your partner’s hand signals.

You see – Kathy S. and I would make sure we stood next to each other in Spelling Bee line (up against the windows.  Always against the windows.  So the teacher could look over our heads and dream her dream of freedom while the Spelling Bee Cluster Bomb was going down?!).  With our uniform skirts pressed so closely together you couldn’t see that our hands were touching.  We worked out this awesome hand-signal system wherein we would “notify” each other whether or not we were spelling words correctly.  AS we were spelling the words.

Kindof like a modified Hellen Keller/Annie Sullivan schtick (W-A-T-E-R!).

The flaw in the plan was that the signals became so complicated – and the odd pauses while we were spelling words became so pronounced – that we had to quit that cockamamie scheme.  It was just easier to know how to spell the words than to remember the signals.

Anyway.  I’m telling you all of this because a similar experience happened to me recently….

Ohhhhhh – say about six months ago.  A colleague yelled “Employment Sparkle!” and I was out.  And Kathy S. was nowhere to be found.