During the 5^th grade spelling bee, I went out on the word flamingo. Two m’s. I had made it to the final three or four. Jonathan Stair picked up my slack, having spelled flamingo correctly, and ran with it. He may have won the whole thing, I can’t quite recall. So having participated in at least one bee back in the day, I appreciate the preparation and the stress that goes into such an endeavor. I watch the Scripps National Spelling Bee blips on the net here and there and am so stoked my spelling bee days never made it beyond the New Paris Elementary gym floor.

So when this popped up into my Twitter timeline this week, I nearly spit out my drink.

Spit. Out. My. Drink.

This is funny. Scripps is funny. They seem to have a sense of humor I didn’t suspect they would have. With quite the affinity for clever witticisms and spell check, the Scripps National Spelling Bee may have captured my heart with just a one word tweet. Little did I know they were just about to skewer it.

I texted the tweet to a few folks.

Little Sis: Yeah, she doesn’t need a “comfort couch”

Me: WTF is a comfort couch? Lol

Big Sis: Lol!

Me: What’s a comfort couch?

Little Sis: lol

Little Sis: Look at the text you sent.

Little Sis: Kyle Chapman wrote it about the spelling bee.

Me: I missed that because the misspelling was so hilarious.

Me: Now I need to google comfort couch and spelling bee.

Big Sis: Lmfao! That makes sending the text even funnier.

Little Sis: Lol!

I didn’t get what was so funny. So I googled comfort couch and spelling bee and found this.

Sometimes I take a look around and I think the absolute world of our world. The achievements we’ve made throughout history, hell the achievements we’ve made throughout the last five years, are simply insane. We are a collective of intellects constantly pursuing, breaking boundaries, and pushing ourselves to greater heights and lengths than ever before imagined. We amaze me.

But sometimes I take a look around and I think the world is going to hell in a hand basket with the word “IDIOT” or better yet – “PARTICIPANT” – uniformly tattooed to our foreheads.

A “comfort couch”? Really? We don’t need crying couches or comfort couches. We need loss and failure and FEAR of failure as catalysts in our lives to do great things. It’s Friday, and I really need a drink, so I’ll refrain from the MEGA soapbox that the PARTICIPATION topic  produces for me, but know this subject will SO be continued at a later date. Maybe even as early as next week if I can make the time for a long winded rant. In the meantime, I’ll  just leave this comfort couch business here for you to ruminate on through the weekend.  Sometimes there’s just not enough whiskey, my friends …