Kathryn’s 5-year-old
developed a strong interest in spelling once she learned to spell STOP. After that, she tried to figure out her own words. From the back seat of the car, she’d ask, “Mom, what does FGRPL spell?”
“Nothing,” Kathryn said.
Sitting at breakfast, she’d suddenly ask, “Mom, what does DOEB spell?”
“Nothing,” Kathryn answered.
This went on for several weeks. Then one afternoon, as they sat coloring in her room, she asked, “Mom, what does LMDZ spell?”
Kathryn smiled at her and said, “Nothing, sweetheart.”
The 5-year-old carefully set down her crayon, sighed, and said, “Boy, there sure are a lot of ways to spell ‘nothing’!”
After several attempts to get the customer service agent on the phone to understand his name,
my Asian American friend Appappa decided to spell it out.
“A for apple,” he began. “P for pineapple, p for pineapple, a for apple, p for pineapple, p for—”
The flustered agent interrupted.
“I have a better idea,” she said. “Just tell me how many apples and how many pineapples.”
Little Johnny wasn’t very good at spelling.
One day, during a spelling exam, the teacher wrote the word “new” on the blackboard.
“Now,” she asked Johnny, “what word would we have if we placed a ‘K’ in the front?”
After thinking for a few seconds, Johnny said, “Canoe?”
A sixth-grade class is doing some spelling drills.
The teacher asks Tommy if he can spell ‘before.’ He stands up and says, “Before, B-E-P-H-O-R.”
The teacher says, “No, that’s wrong. Can anyone else spell before?”
Another little boy stands up and says, “Before, B-E-F-O-O-R.”
Again, the teacher says, “No, that’s wrong.” The teacher asks, “Little Johnny, can you spell ‘before’?”
Little Johnny stands up and says, “Before, B-E-F-O-R-E.”
“Excellent, Johnny, now can you use it in a sentence?”
Little Johnny says, “That’s easy. Two plus two be fore.”