How is Pragya Choudhary, Speller 231, today?
"I'd say I was fine, but then I'd be lying," she told Dr. Bailly.
But the Michigan eighth grader did just fine.
Her word was "affluenza," the unhealthy and unwelcome psychological and social effects of wealth, such as extreme materialism and consumerism, regarded especially as a widespread societal problem.
Her sentence: "'There's no such thing as affluenza,' Larry argued, while gazing sadly at his gold watch, a single tear plopping off his moisturized cheek onto the white marble floor."
Pragya closed her eyes, and with her finger, wrote the word in the air. She underlined it with a flourish when she was done,
