Super-Laura-Rabulistic-Milonga-Lupercalia

A late night visit to the high school auditorium this week found Laura competing in the county-wide spelling bee. Janene had been there all night when there had been forty six contestants. By the time I got there, the pack was narrowed down to about ten, and the administrators had gone "off list", meaning that they were giving the kids words that they had not studied and that nobody except my mother had ever heard or used. As each child was disqualified, their family packed up their belongings and left the hall. I had walked into an auditorium with only a scattering of occupants, Janene and Angie sitting on the floor in the rear watching the rest of Laura's siblings.

We were all excited as Laura made it to the final round with only two contestants. They each had to spell two words correctly with no errors to be able to crowned the victor. My heart sank as she misspelled "milonga" (a dance related to the tango). It didn't help that the pronouncer flubbed the pronunciation. The young man who was competing against her also missed his word, so the race was on again. Laura clinched the competition with the word "Lupercalia", a word she recognized by it's Greek origin. In the  end, it was hard to recognize it as a competition with only three or four families interspersed in a room that holds two thousand.

 Laura will tell you she didn't study for this, but her voracious reading habits and understanding of three languages  most likely prepared her well for the experience. She walked away with another scholarship ($3000.00) and a gift basket filled with $400 in gift certificates and tickets. Sam said "Wow, she won't even have to pay for college" as he added up the previous scholarship in his mind. It won't be too long and Sam (he who read all of Harry Potter when he was five or six) will be filling her shoes.