D-I-S-I-N-T-E-G-R-A-T-I-O-N

Not a difficult word, none of them were, really, but ironically, the word that caused Sarabelle's composition to crumble. She raced through it unable to slow herself down long enough to break it into syllables. But she did a fine job and made it through several rounds to the halfway point. We're very proud of her. Now that she knows the procedure she is eager to give it another try. She knows she could win it. So do we.

The announcer, sportscaster Dick Crippin, was horrible. Multisyllabic words are apparently an unnecessary part of a sportscaster's job. Several very justifiable protests were filed between nearly each round due to his atrocious pronunciation. Asterisk became "asterick" and malady was spoken as "milady." Intertidal sounded like "intertitle" and had the girl not asked for a definition, I would have misspelled it too. When the word was requested to be used in a sentence Mr. Crippin offered a definition and vice versa.

I didn't catch the name of the boy who won, Dick either had a tee time to keep or was embarrassed by his own abysmal performance, especially after bungling the last round between the winner and first runner-up, and hastily abandoned the podium failing to announce it to the few of us who stuck it out to the end. But we'll still be rooting for our local Florida boy.