Miss Spelt Asks: To Bee or Not To Bee

Local seventh grader Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan, who lives in Superior and won the regional spelling championships a few months back, is moving on to the national level this week, for the third year in a row.

I don't know about you, but I happen to think that anybody with a name like Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan has an unfair advantage in any spelling bee. Just learning to spell her own name has forced her to tap the full powers of the spelling section of her brain (called the cerespellum). Plus, she lives in Superior, whose residents are inherently better at everything.

Maithreyi won the regional round on the word "natatorium", so I expect the next round to go swimmingly.

However, a word of caution for this local word whiz. If the English-only folks get their way (see my earlier post), our monolingual children will be protected from the unfair advantage that Maithreyi (who was born in India) receives from being multi-lingual. She will be forced by spelling bee rules to forget all foreign words. In fact all words of foreign origin will be eliminated from the competition.

From now on, these kids will have to learn only good American words, like "iPod", "Kleenex", and "Pepsi".

Good luck in Washington Maithreyi, and remember to get a good night's sleep before the competition!