6/16/06 SCRIPPS HAS NOTHING ON ME
I am amazed that the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee was recently televised on live, national, prime-time television, and that more than 10 people tuned in to watch. So, I figure that if that event is interesting enough to keep ABC from airing the pilot episode of “Lost” for the 43rd time, the story of my own spelling bee experience could warrant a blog.
Back in the mists of time, I was a 4th grader at Kokomo Christian School without too much interest in the academic side of things. Now don’t get me wrong, I did love learning things. Its just that I wasn’t that competitive with grades and such. In Christian schools, you basically have three kinds of kids- ‘normal’, which I felt myself to be; ‘trouble makers’, whose parents sent them there trying to reform them; and finally, ‘highly serious achievers’, kids whose grades were the end-all be-all of their existence. I say ‘kids’ in an attempt to be general, but they were in fact all girls. Not a single self respecting guy would be caught dead trying to be smart. As you can imagine, we all thought one of those girls would be the designated representative for our school at the Indiana State Spelling Bee.
To choose the winner, our teacher devised a two part test. First, there was the written test. Any of several hundred possible words would be read by the teacher from the front of the class, and the students would write them down. Anyone who got 80% and were in the top six would qualify for the second round. I remember I was sixth, with a 79.6%, which rounded up to 80, thereby just qualifying me to make it into the second round. The scores from the first, or written round, would be averaged with the second, oral round.
My competition in said round was very stiff. Among the five girls- and I’ll change their names so you can’t look them up in a phone book and then go taunt them, but so they can still recognize themselves should they by some amazing chance now be a corporate speaker or meeting planner- were some of the toughest spellers the greater Howard County area has ever produced. There was Kristin Schmydt, who worked so diligently and seriously she may have only spoken out loud maybe three times in the six years I knew her. Also among those wishing to take the crown was Stephanie Hule, who was nice and all, but seriously, who needs to wear their Brownie outfit like three times a week? And finally, the prohibitive favorite, Michelle Wilton. She prided herself on her tightly braided blonde hair in addition to her grades, and I remember her crying once when she only got 19 out of 20 on one of our regular weekly spelling tests.
The odds were not in favor of the young Brian, especially since it wasn’t just who would win the oral competition, it was the average of the two scores. I’d have to do so well, and they so poorly, that it would outweigh the 100’s the girls had gotten on the written test.
(EDITORS NOTE: Wouldn’t you have to be a pretty sad person if one of your Glory Days was a 4th grade spelling bee?)
(AUTHORS NOTE: Just be quiet. You try coming up with a new blog idea every week.)
And so the oral quiz began. The six of us were sitting in chairs at the front, with the teacher standing to the side, reading off the word for us to spell. The first words were always really easy ones, all answered correctly, but then something strange began to happen. The trouble-makers started taunting the contestants. The teacher quieted them down, but it opened the door on my first break. One of the girls actually missed a question. Then the rest of the boys (only boys made up the trouble makers) realized that I was the only boy up there, and began to cheer whenever it came around to me. Well, encouragement is something they, well, encourage in a Christian school, so the teacher couldn’t very well stop them. Suddenly the ‘highly serious achievers’ realized no one was cheering for them (after all, all the highly serious achievers were up front competing), and began to wilt under the pressure. They started to miss words rigt and lefft. Our classmates started to really get into it, inching their chairs forward, laughing, cheering, clapping. So far I'd only missed one word. The teacher paused to tally up the scores before starting the final round. The suspense in the room was palpable. Without revealing the scores, she started giving each of us our final word to spell. One by one, the girls misspelled their last words. It was ladies first, so the very last word to be attempted was by me. The teacher paused, then said, “I’ve tallied up the scores, and if Brian gets this, he wins.” She might have been subtly trying to unnerve me, because like any good teacher, I’m sure she wanted someone who actually cared about spelling and studied to represent the school at state. She would not be so lucky. She read the last word, which was a relatively little known book of the Bible at the end of the Old Testament, pronounced “NAY-hoom”. “N…” I started. A hush fell over my classmates. “A…H…U…” The crowd (or soon to be mob) was silent. “…M.” Everyone looked expectantly at the teacher, but I already knew what she was about to say. “That’s correct," she said. It was all over.
All the boys rushed up and there was general pandemonium (P-A-N-D-E-M-O-N-I-U-M, pandemonium). I was surrounded, so I couldn’t see if Michelle was crying or if Stephanie was fidgeting in her Brownie outfit, but I’m sure Kristin was being very quiet. All I knew was that I had just won what was likely the most dramatic comeback in KCS spelling bee history.
The trip to Indianapolis for the State Championship was rather anti-climactic. I was surrounded by 95% girls, of whom 100% wore plaid or floral print dresses. I was one of the few people who weren’t carrying around their own well-worn dictionary. The preliminary rounds were conducted in cramped classrooms, where mini-spelling bees were conducted, and you were moved into ever-larger and larger classrooms. It was single elimination, so the furthest I got was a closet. The word I missed? “Tomb.” How lame is that? We left for the long drive home well before it ever got to the auditorium for the finals. I was happy to have at least gotten out of a day of school.
This experience gave me confidence, and my above-mediocre ability to spell has served me well in my current position, as there are a lot of speakers with tough names- Peter Ricchuiti, Tony Alessandra, Vince Papale, Mike Eruzione, etc. I guess it was good for sumthing!
