Spellbound

AGNATICALLY.

I spent Wednesday at the National Spelling Bee cheering my nephew on. I am so proud of him - he made it to the third round and was finally eliminated on the word agnatically. Excuse me, but I STILL don't know what that word means!

Okay, here is what the dictionary says about it - it is the adverb form of agnate:

Related on or descended from the father's or male side.
Coming from a common source; akin.

I NEVER would have gotten it - even with a definition. In fact, nobody in my family knew what it meant and my sister and father have minds like steel traps - sometimes I wonder if they might have photographic memories. My nephew is the same - incredibly bright and reads voraciously. He knew so many of the words that were given to other students. Just the luck of the draw, I guess.

Outside of the spelling bee were protesters. An interesting thing to protest. Apparently, the protesters feel we should spell words phonetically. They argue that our current spelling breeds illiteracy. I'm not sure I follow that logic! I have no doubt the kids in that competition are like my nephew and read all the time. My father calls it the dumbing down of America. Well, without hearing the full argument I can't say exactly what they thought, but with my limited knowledge of the argument, I happen to agree with my father - a RARE occurrence!

Don't get me wrong, I love and respect my father immensely. We just have very disparate views on almost everything. In fact, I can say that I share few views of my entire immediate family. It can be very hard always being on the outside. It doesn't stop me from speaking my mind though.

I got on my soapbox with him just the other day, actually. He forwarded an e-mail that I disagreed with and I let him know why. Of course, I couldn't just leave it at that - oh, no - heaven forbid I LET GO of an argument! I had to send him a quote of James Madison to support my position. This was the response I got: "My only reason in sending you this e-mail was its reference to Metro KC – nothing more. I will not bother you with this again." Huh. I wasn't BOTHERED - not in the sense that his forwarding e-mails bothers me. And if the ONLY reason in sending it was the reference stated, why forward the contents he KNOWS will get a response from me? Does he like the sparring? I haven't quite figured it out.

Family relationships are fascinating . . . and complicated. Like the word agnatically (hmm . . . is it just coincidence the meaning of the word has family in it?). And like my nephew, this is where I'm eliminated!

P. S. The spell-checker didn't even know the damn word!