Spelling bees mix tedium with terror, and in my experience, feature surprisingly calamitous intersections of fate. As a fifth grader, my daughter Eliza was an impressive speller. She was confident she would win her school bee, and after that, she her eye on the town bee. On the day of the school bee, Eliza, who was very short for her age, was placed alphabetically next to a decidedly rotund youngster named RJ. Coincidentally, RJ’s spelling word was “hefty,” which sparked an immediate burst of irreverent laughter. RJ, thrown by the audience’s response, misspelled his word, and Eliza was up. Unbelievably, her word was “dwarf.” After the fresh wave of laughter died away, Eliza, who knew this word from years of familiarity with Snow White and her diminutive housemates, began.

“D-O   ” she began, before gasping and bursting into tears.

When Eliza put some distance between herself and public humiliation, we’d gently jest about that day and dorfs, but I often wondered if the bee officiator was guilty of sadistic deliberation in assigning words.

Now I know that the words of the bee are part of a specific list, and they are read in order, not randomly. RJ and Eliza were simply dealt a cruel but predestined hand.

This past week, we had our school bee. Things were plodding along until one young speller, whose complexion reflects her Irish lineage, came up to the podium.

“Freckle,” said the officiator. I heard the laughter, and saw the student blush.

“F-R-C-K-L-E,” she spelled.

Why would destiny pick spelling bees as a medium of torture? Seriously, kids don’t have enough to worry about, now they have to deal with a malevolent universe that provides earnest English teachers a means to make them objects of ridicule and subsequent failure! Spelling bees have been called old-fashioned, and indeed they are, in the manner of stocks and pillories, or better yet, the guillotine (A noun of French origin, a device for beheading persons, consisting of a weighted blade between two posts).