Wednesday, April 21, 2010

literacy endeavours

The last couple of days were eventful, bibliophilically (that`s not a real word at all) speaking.

On Saturday, I attended the Regional Spelling Bee. When I had originally signed up, it was to be a Name Announcer for ONE round. I'm unsure how the road wound from there to Word Pronouncer, but I'm sure it was littered with words like “opportunity” and “challenge”. Anyway, I accepted, albeit nervously. You know, poppets, that Canadian isn’t my first English; my first English was a strange mix of Irish, British and Indian, resulting a strong (and distinct) Anglo-Indian accent. This means V’s warp into W’s and R’s become Ah’s. It also means that for words I've never heard spoken and have only read – you would be surprised as to how many of these exist – I almost inevitably screw it up. “Epitome” was always “eh-pit-tome” until someone said “you mean, uh-pit-oh-me”. Then there are words that I’ve only ever heard my parents say and which I wouldn’t know the correct way of saying anyway: who can forget a Grade Nine lunch hour when I sat across from Natalia and lamented these “so”s in my mouth that really made eating hard; she looked at me and said “you mean, sores? Like canker sores?” ... like, totally, kill me now.

Anyway, a few nightmarish sleeps went by (one of which involved me forgetting how to read... *shudder*), I was there on Saturday morning, having woken up at 0530 to get dressed, fix my hair and do my “camera” make-up. Instead, I was told to wipe it all off and that my make-up had to be TV-proof. By the end of it, I looked like an extra on a Bollywood film set, caked in some of the heaviest foundation I’ve ever worn. Three categories awaited!

Primary: for six- to eight-year-olds. These kids were the cutest things ever! One little girl had two lopsided pigtails that would boppity-bop every time she said a letter. Your word is monkey: “m” boppity “o” boppity “n” boppity... it was so hard to stay neutral and not pinch her cheeks. Then there was the mini-Travolta in his Saturday Night Fever ensemble – adorabubble! The word that got over half kicked out? Bias. Such a simple word, but, I guess not a word (or concept, really) you come across as a six-, seven- or eight-year-old. So many of them spelled it “b-u-y-e-s-t”. Later, after the trophies, as I was giving out congratulations, I asked a few of them what they thought the word bias meant. This was the response: “you know, when you go to the store and there’s this one thing that a lot of people buy? That’s the buyest thing in the store.” Love. It.

Intermediate: for twelve- to fourteen-year-olds. This one had the word “benison” (of which, I’d never heard). It knocked fourteen competitors, prompting the MC to comment that he would be petitioning Oxford to allow an alternate definition of benison: “to obliterate or annihilate en masse”. This one ended with an epic twenty-six rounds (and 53 words in a row spelled correctly. You should also know that every spellchecker I've used has prompted me to spell it as "venison" instead; if only the kids had had that clue.

Junior: for nine- to eleven-year-olds. This one had it all: over 90 contestants, tears, protests from the audience, the threat of removal and a final, unabashed winner. It took three and a half hours. By the end of it, my word was definitely “exhausted”.

All-in-all, a great experience.

***

Last night, I went to see Christopher Moore at Chapter’s. Yes, he is as funny in person as you could imagine him to be. Another three and half hours, this time in line to get my book signed: he called me “brave” for book-talking Lamb to a bunch of niners; I thanked him for making me cool. Did you know Moore used to supervise a night crew at a grocery store in his youth? You hear that, LilBro? There’s hope yet.

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