Christine Lavin

These are the REAL words thrown at those 13 year olds:

TOO OLD FOR THE BEE
2009 Christine Lavin Music, Administered by Bug Music

I'm too old for the National Spelling Bee
But its just as well
As a kid I was a wiz at words
But now its hard for me to S-P-E-L . . . L
(for a second there I almost felt like Dan Quayle)

Maybe you still have dreams
Of spelling those difficult words
But listen to what they threw at those
Brainy brave little nerds

G-R-A-N-A-C-H-E  - that spells granache
A wine grape grown in Southern France
Probably fun to squash

D-A-U-E-R-L-A-U-F  dauerlauf
A long distance cross country ski race
Take your mark . . . get set . . . now theyre off!

Clotrimazole C-L-O-T-R-I-M-A-Z-O-L-E
Eew, an anti-fungal ointment you apply liberally

F-L-I-T-T-E-R-N  flittern
Pertains to the bark of a young oak tree
A word you didnt expect youd learn

Sententious  S-E-N-T-E-N-T-I-O-U-S
What do you think it means
Come on and guess!
Yes, abounding in aphorisms
An aphorisms a tersely phrased bon mot
Like If you always do what you always did,
You will always get what you always got
(Moms Mabley said that.)

C-L-O-G-W-Y-N  a clogwyn is a cliff

An A-L-A-S-T-O-R (alastor) is an avenging diety
Who knew they had tiffs?

W-E-I-S-S . . . N-I-C-H-T-W-O
Yes it is a German word
Pronounced vi-snict-vo
It means an imaginary situation
Like competing in a spelling bee
I must come to grips with the fact
Such glorys not meant for me

Last night I dreamed I was told to spell
Humuhumunukunukuapuaa  (thats a Hawaiian trigger fish) then
I said HU-MU-HUMU-NU-KUN . . .
U-KU-A-PU-A -A  I got it right!
Thats as close as Ill ever get to a spelling bee
In my dream last night

So Ill set my sites on other dreams
that I might attain
Like mastering sign language
Thats a challenge for my brain
And learning to knit a cable
Something Ive yet to do
A spelling bee is out of reach for me . . .

Kids, I leave that to . . .U-A-K-A-R-I -  uakarai
A tree-dwelling short-tailed Amazon basin monkey
It has shaggy fur, humanlike ears, and a distinctive bald face
that become flushed when he is excited and jumps all over the place

Look at that uakari monkey in that tree
someday he might help U A K A R I win a spelling bee

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