The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Friday's play was hilarious with a fair bit of it ad-libbed due to the three guest spellers. The guests were an 8 year old boy and two grown men, one being a local radio celebrity, Michael Berry. I wasn't sure how well a musical about a spelling bee would go over, but I think they did a great job of it not just being an hour and forty-five minutes of nothing but them spelling words for us. Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of spelling and some of the words they were asked to spell were some of the funniest moments.

But as funny and touching as it was, there were a couple of moments when I cringed. The returning champion of last years spelling bee sees a girl in the audience that he thinks is cute, thinks a little too much about her cuteness and develops an...well, use your imagination. Because of this embarrassing situation, when it is his turn he flubs the word he is supposed to spell and gets disqualified. Cringing over, yes? Uh, no! The play is too short for an intermission, but they do have a break where everyone goes off stage. During this 3-5 minutes, the lately disqualified kid comes back and entertains us with a song about the circumstances of his disqualification. Yes, several minutes of him singing about his embarrassing situation - over and over and over again!

Sadly, I don't cringe at innuendo too easily. I should, but I am fairly desensitized to it what with it being so pervasive in TV and film. This was not innuendo. This was blatant, in your face singing about the male anatomy and the embarrassing situations it can get a young man into! A lot of younger kids attended and I can only imagine that on the way home there were a lot of questions as to why the boy had to put something in front of his pants before he came up to the front of the class and what the words in his song meant. Hopefully it did all just go over their heads. It didn't go over mine and I CRINGED!!