Spellbound

Last night we were playing spelling bee with Sam and Jane. [OK, full disclosure: Vicki was playing spelling bee with them. I was near the bee but at the sink doing the dishes.]

The game is pretty straightforward: Vicki pulls a card with a picture on it from a deck. Each image has a word on the other side identifying what the picture is (car, cat, etc.). The kids take turns identifying what the picture is, and Samson gets to spell the word while Jane tries to use it in a sentence.

So far so good. We made it through "dog," "wig," and "mop" with no problem. Then we got to "fox," which Sam, for some reason, spelled F-U-X. And while I thought it was kind of funny, I managed to keep my inner Beavis in check and focus on loading the dishwasher.

Vicki told Sam he hadn't gotten it right and asked him to sound it out. On the second try, he spelled it correctly. To which Vicki cheerily added: "Very good. The short 'O' sound makes it FOX. If you used a 'U' that would be F______."

I'm not sure what that unit of time is called for the micro-fraction of a second that elapsed between Vicki's "teachable moment" and the realization that she'd just dropped the F-bomb --- albeit phonetically and unintentionally --- during the spelling bee.

I almost bit my tongue in half to keep from laughing. Vicki, the very vision of grace under pressure, channeled her royal (if not actual) namesake, smiled broadly, and continued on to the next word.

Which was "rug."