Spelling is my NEMESIS ??!!

I am always mildly surprised to glean vocabulary hints from my children; I resigned myself long ago to the view that they don't really pay attention to me.  Imagine my astonishment, then, when my third-grader announced that spelling was his nemesis, and that he did not, after all, view himself as a philomath.

Oh, dear.  All this before the second cup of coffee.  What could this possibly mean?

It turns out that my son's incredibly erudite teacher, a philomath herself and possibly a disciple of epeolatry, has been assigning the class one "bonus" word a week from our spelling list.  Because there is a parent-based team bearing her name at the Bee, she has access to all the words (not from me, I hasten to add: I do my best to observe proper boundaries with people close to the Bee and me).

Well, I had about 53 seconds between this astonishing revelation and the need to run, fast, for the school bus.  I did two things: made sure that my little flibbertigibbet had a sweater so that he would not become a gymnosophist, and gave silent thanks to the other Word Wizard in his life, to whom he evidently pays closer attention.