Upon Further Review
OK, here’s something that just has to warm the cockles of your heart - a spelling bee contestant in Nevada was wrongly ex-spelled from the contest and has now retained counsel and may sue the school district. The student wants to re-open the contest and replay the final round with two other contestants, to see who represents the school district in the state competition.
I wonder if the Seahawks can sue to go back to any one of three or four pivotal points in the Super Bowl where they might have been victims of bad calls by the referees. I can hear the ref on his microphone from the field now: “Please reset the clock…no, reset the calendar…to February 5, 2006 at 6:25 pm PST. Also, refill your beer glasses to the level they were when the whistle blew…Still 2nd down. (whistle sounds)”
A version of this happened to me back in the fourth grade. As a culmination of classroom spelling contests, a group of us advanced to compete in a school-wide spelling bee in the grade school auditorium. Mom, you’ll have to help me out here, I don’t remember whether it was at night with parents in attendance, or during the day with just the schoolkids and teachers.
Anyway, it came down to two of us left standing - me and a sixth-grader, Kathy Cunningham. I was given a word and confidently spelled it “j-u-d-g-e-m-e-n-t”. I couldn’t believe it when Mr. Nichols, the principal, said I was wrong. “j-u-d-g-m-e-n-t” made no sense at all. I looked it up in our dictionary when I got home, and saw that my spelling was permitted (although a less preferable “variant”).
I remember thinking it was more than a little unfair. I’d much rather have gone down, if at all, on a much harder word. I took losing that contest pretty hard. I probably bitched and moaned like the girl in the article above, but my parents apparently had better sense than her parents have. Either that, or they couldn’t afford a lawyer.
I hope Kathy Cunningham went on to do something with her life.
