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by Free Market Duck

Student Wins National Spelling Bee; Spells Christmas With An 'X'

   The 39^th National Public Schools Spelling Bee in Homedale, Nebraska, ended in a riot yesterday as parents, school administrators, and candy bar sponsors disagreed with Eighth Grader Nelson Q. Finkelstein’s sparse choice of alphabet letters to spell the word “Christmas” as “Xmas” in the 2004 National Alphabet Spell-Off.

    “Why, it’s just unconscionable – U-N-C-O-N-S-C-I-O-N-A-B-L-E – for a student to abbreviate the holiest religious holiday of the year and replace the word “Christ” with a big fat “X,” responded Mrs. Julie Thesaurus, mother of losing competitor Susie Thesaurus from Christianville, California. 

    Little Finkelstein, self-described as a 4-foot 2-inch pipsqueak wearing Harry Potter fake glasses with phony big bushy eyebrows responded, “Hey, that’s how we spell it in my Jewish neighborhood.”  Finkelstein is a straight-A student who attends Public School # 512 in Brooklyn, New York.  Both his parents fainted after his explanation.

    School Principal Olivia Q. Dictionary the III received a rotten tomato in the face as she stumbled up to the podium in an attempt to quell – Q-U-E-L-L -- the ensuing riot and explain why the public school system has instituted the new dumbing-down approach to spelling over the last five years.

    “Many students' feelings were being hurt by the inefficacious – I-N-E-F-F-I-C-A-C-I-O-U-S – methodology that was in vogue at our public schools over the previous ten years.  So we decided to implement all the short, or colloquial – that’s spelled C-O-L-L-O-Q-U-I-A-L, versions of all the words in the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary to give those students who are Alphabet-Challenged a chance to advance all the way to a PhD in Education if they can hack it.”

    Many parents did not buy Principal Olivia’s explanation as they held up the crosses around their necks and screamed, “Does this look like an ‘X?’”  Other non-Christian parents sang the theme song to Twilight Zone:  Doo-Doo-Doo-Doo, as they watched the battle develop from the safety of their balcony seats.

    “I wonder what they’re talking about?” exclaimed Buddhist mother of participant Lee Wong as she dodged a flying banana and grabbed her child to go home.

    “Who cares?” chimed in Mr. Abdul Muhammad the III whose seventh-grade child, Abdul Jr., also participated as a finalist in the national spelling Bee.  “We don’t know how to spell 'Christmas' either.  My son would have spelled it 'Allahmas' or 'Muhammadmas' or something and, well, we just think it was unfair to throw in a religious word that favored the Christians over us Muslims.  Next year,” added Mr. Abdul, “let’s see if the Christians can spell, ‘Throw them to the lions,’ -- that’s capital L-I-O-N-S -- ha-ha, meow.”

    After Detective Harmon Tardio of the Homedale Police Department arrived with the Nebraska State National Guard, he ordered the parents at gunpoint to help clean up their mess.  “You will clean up this auditorium before anybody is allowed to go home tonight or it’s your ass – that’s spelled:  Y-O-U-R space A-S-S.”

    Fifty-four official protests were filed with the Administrators of The 39^th National Public Schools Spelling Bee as parents and their participating children were outraged at the new rules that allowed short versions of popular words in the 2002 Spelling Bee.  Many parents were worried that the new shorties would morph – that’s M-O-R-P-H – into the legalization of phonetics in next year’s National Spell-Off.

    “I think we should allow the kids to spell phonetically,” interjected Bubba Baloosky from Kalamazoo, Michigan.”

    “Hey,” added parent Benjamin BoDiddly from Schenectady, New York.  “If you allow phonetics then you should allow Hip Hop Heavy Metal words, man.  Like you should allow the word ‘dis’ for ‘disrespect’ and the word ‘booty’ for ‘derriere,’ know what I’m saying?”

   “Uh-uh, now dat ain’t right, Dog,” screamed Ms. B.B. Brown from Biloxi, Mississippi.  “Can you imagine,” she dissed Mr. Benjamin, “next year we be allowing our students to get away with spelling the phrase, “’Sup, Dog?’ like that instead of the correct version: ‘Hey, my main man.  What is up, Dog?’  I axt you, is this be acceptable in a National Spelling Bee?”

     Many parents categorized the problem as a moral issue rather than a spelling issue.  They described the derivation of the word ‘Christmas’ as a combination of the two terms:  Christ and Mass.  Christ refers, of course, to the Christian Son of God, Jesus, while the word Mass refers to the Christian religious ceremony of Mass.  Combining the two words, Christ and Mass, and omitting the last ‘s’ refers to the Mass with Christ, or Christmas.  For Christians, Christmas is celebrated on the best-known guesstimate of Jesus’ birthday, currently December 25 of each year.

    On this same morality note, Senator I.M. Right the III from Salt Lake City, Utah, promised to introduce morality legislation to both houses of Congress next week.

    “We desperately need to pass,” said Senator Right, “an Xmas Spell-Check Law establishing a new National Public Education Spelling Bureau, funded to the tune of $18 trillion, the function of which is to arrest bad spellers for possession of 2 or more consonants of the English alphabet with no apparent vowels, punishable by 15 years to life imprisonment.  Black Market alphabet traffickers will automatically go to prison for life.  We all know that possession of the alphabet leads to worse habits such as the formation of words, then creating long sentences and, God forbid, eventually writing a complete heartbreaking paragraph.  The ultimate, of course, is a damn book.  Trilogy writers should burn in Hell.  We just can’t let that happen,” shrieked Senator Right as he flipped a one and a half from the pulpit.

    “Whoa, can I get an Amen?” asked Detective Harmon Tardio as he read his notes from Senator Right and typed up his police riot report.

    Speaking from his California King Size bed at the Vatican late last night, Pope Lexy Lexicon the III responded to the riotous news of the U.S. National Spelling Bee with, “Holy Moly, I can spell ‘pedophilic promiscuity:  P-E-D-O…’  On second thought, I would rather spell ‘chrysanthemum…’  let’s see now, capital C-H… hmm, gee whizzers, I forgot.”

    “Hell, it don’t matter,” said Joe the wino pushing a shopping cart in the snow outside the National Spelling Bee, “whether you spell it ‘Xmas’ or ‘Ymas’ or ‘Zmas’ or ‘Christmas.’  Just so all the consumers empty their bank accounts and spend tons of inflated Federal Reserve Notes on meaningless Xmas toys in order to save the U.S. economy from bankruptcy – I believe that’s a capital B-A-N-K-R-U-P-T-C-Y – this year.  At least that’s what the U.S. Government economists – spelled B-I-G  B-R-O-T-H-E-R -- told us in their – H-O  H-O  H-O,  S-A-N-T-A   C-L-A-U-S – Fairy Tales last week, dude.”

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