Of the Wii and the Bee

J got his Wii this past weekend and is already wanting another game to play with it. The Wii comes with sports games (tennis, boxing, baseball, golf, and our favorite bowling). You can play a training session with each of theses sports. Like in bowling there are power throws and practice in how to deal with splits; baseball, there is a homerun derby type of game. J gets a tad frustrated when he's playing the sports. Actually it's more than a tad, he REALLY gets upset when things go south. Maybe it's his competitive spirit. It's something we hear this low rumble, "I really need another game!" He says this at least 10 times of playing the Wii when he is really frustrated. Then we say, "Yeah, and you really need at least $45 more to make that happen." The game that he wants, Wii Music, costs $50. I have been told, from several sources that Wii fit is the thing to get. Wii Fit is at least $100. That's the job to have be a Wii salesperson or at least create some games for the Wii, as people really buy into these games.

Tonight we all bowled on the Wii Sports. It is nearly like how I bowl in real life. My bowling scores are never over 200. When I used to play regularly from my early years of learning how to play, through high school; in college (this was what I did for my PE class as a freshman) and when I worked for Bell (we had a bowling team back then) my average would be no better than 150. I remember holding the ball and how tired my arm would get throwing a ball of 13 pounds. Now I wouldn't even attempt to throw that heavy, it would kill me! But with Wii sports everything with this game is done by using your arm. I see myself missing easy spares and also those difficult splits. It is fun to have wii sports, but if you do it too much it can be quite boring.
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Tomorrow, J is in the spelling bee for his 6th grade class. Correction: It is the school spelling bee. J is in it along with B (who was there last year) and E (a girl), and L (a goofball). J said that no one really wanted to try out for it. He knows that since he wasn't going to be in Battle of the Books that I would want him in the Bee.

This is his second year in competition. I have seen the spelling bee go on for over 5 years. S nearly made it to state her final year, getting 2nd in the county. She got 3rd in the county in 6th grade. I will see which words each kid spells and go over with it with J. I just want him to do his best. It gets me nervous watching them spell because I want them to do well. Just getting into the bee to represent his grade is an accomplishment in itself.

I had always wanted to be in a spelling bee growing up, but our school didn't have one. I did pretty well in spelling, getting all A's in that subject. In 4th grade if I missed any words on a test my teacher would make me write them 10-15 or more times. It was more of a penmanship assignment than a "remember how to spell it correctly the next time." I put great effort in writing these out and the teacher probably looked these over and ripped them up after checking them. It was a waste of my time. I had other things to study and here I was pouring my heart out writing these words "pefectly."

I don't hear much of this kind of torture going on in schools now. I guess today's teachers went through the same rigors of schooling as I did!