Spelling Makes Everything Better

You will not believe me when I say that sometimes I censor what I write in this spot. I know! The person who has written about pantyhose and her eyebrows so many times they show up in Google searches leaves something unpublished?

Yes. Once in a great while I look at what I've just written and say to myself, "Hey, how about you hold off for just a second and think about this? Is that really the tone of voice you want to use, Missy?"

Yesterday was such a day. I wrote a page-long rant about elections, which actually was a page-long rant about the people who are making me CRAZY calling me about elections. I mean, normally I am a good citizen and want to do the good citizen-y thing by participating in all things election related. But this year? We are getting four to six calls EVERY NIGHT asking whether we plan to vote, and for whom we will be voting, and would you please listen to the following statement and say whether you strongly agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree? I know the pollsters have a job to do and are way underpaid to do it, but we do not continue to pay for a land line in the House on the Corner just so I can mess up the poll results because I get confused between 7 (somewhat strongly agree) and 2 (would never in a million years wear stretch pants).

I even had a picture of cranky Uncle Sam queued up and pointing directly at you, the voting reader, to indicate my displeasure with the hundreds of calls from pollsters and the mega-hundreds of robocalls from elected officials who are endorsing candidates, which in my opinion is a pretty poor way to solicit my vote since I think every current office-holder should be thrown out and we should re-start government with a clean slate. I mean, didn't they seem to do this better back when Washington was president?

Anyway, I'm not going to write about that. Instead I'm going to say that this morning I was pronouncer at the city spelling bee, and I pretty much love that job to an incoherent degree except that I spent two hours staring at the backsides of the winners' trophies while I pronounced words and I now want one desperately.

Are those not the cutest things you've ever seen in your life? They are Spelling Queen Bees!

Queen bees who spell, and who are either holding torches or making a rude gesture toward the i-before-e-except-after-c rule. I seriously thought about slipping one into my purse then looking around with big innocent eyes when the fourth-place winner wondered where his trophy had gone.

If I had one of these trophies I could not be irritated, not even when the eighth call from UNKNOWN NUMBER shows up as we're finishing dinner. No, I would stay calm and answer it, and say "Friend, we have a land line because the stucco walls of the House on the Corner make cell phone reception sketchy and I'm pretty sure someone I love is going to call, but you are not that someone. So unless you are calling to offer me a Spelling Queen Been trophy, good-bye."

G-O-O-D-B-Y-E.