There's honor in losing to a socially-stunted spelling savant. They're freaks of nature, some of those kids. Hell, I might have even won the whole thing, and gone on to nationals, where I could get beaten by one of those creepy home-schooled kids. If I just could have kept my big mouth shut with that damned 'E', I might've had a chance. I could have stopped right there and had a fifty-fifty chance. Maybe even the right word I honestly don't remember. I didn't know it at the time, but I'd successfully spelled a word. But eventually, I ran out of questions to ask, and gave it a go. I asked for a definition, and an example sentence, without really listening to what the proctor's responses. Especially since I didn't really know what either of them meant. And I was just fucking positive that I'd pick the wrong one. Now, I knew there were two words that sounded like that. I walked up to the microphone, and they gave me my word. I spelled a few words, and the field thinned down to a dozen kids or so. I remind her of that every once in a while, just for kicks. I think I know what ' mildewed' looks like. You're positive? 'Cause that doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard of. And don't curse at your mother, you little shit. Me: 'Mill-duh-wed'? What the hell is that? I remember - because I'm never going to let my mother forget - having the following conversation: It got so bad that the few common words in the book would blend into the sea of obfuscation and confusion. Really, I mean ridiculously useless crap, here. The local term for the garnish used to decorate the feast held by some pygmy African tribe every three hundred years. Some of these bitches meant things that maybe four people on the planet would ever need to know - the name for the second thoracic segment of a rare Bolivian caterpillar. But these - these were like five dollar words, and most of them had definitions to match. What was I talking about?)īut these words! Who the hell uses these words, anyway? I mean, there are big words, and there are fancy words, and then there are fiddy cent words. Have I mentioned that my short-term memory is about as short as a. Though, sadly, doing it that way didn't work quite as badly as you'd probably think. (See, it didn't work so well when I had the book, and looked at the words I needed to spell. Most of the time, she'd take the book, and give me the word to spell. But I worked hard - when my mother made me, anyway - and learned a new trick or two from the funky book of words. I could spell some of the mystery terms, just from sounding them out, but others were just too oddball. I make no guarantees about grammar around here.) So, I studied from the list of words in the book I think they were mainly words used in previous bees, so as to give a realistic idea of what ridiculous obscure shit they might throw at you.Īnd ridiculous obscure shit it was. I guess it had only hard words, but not the very most hardest. After winning the school spelling bee to qualify for regionals, they gave me a 'speller's dictionary'. This is gonna keep me up at night.)Īnyway, the studying. You need snot-nosed kids for one, and blue-haired old ladies for the other. In the other, the yakking and gossipmongering is constant and varied. In one, you talk only when asked to step forward, and if you say the wrong thing, you're loudly buzzed and asked to leave. You use your brain in one, and your fingers in the other. One's for English students, the other's for the 'home ec' crowd. Hey, why is that that 'spelling' and 'quilting' are the only kinds of 'bees' that we have? What's so special about these get-togethers, and what the hell is similar enough about them to lead us to call them by the same name? Really, I don't see it. I studied for weeks leading up to the big bee. I was gonna kick some ass, and spell some names. So when I went back, I was ready to rumble. But I bowed out pretty early the first time around. I competed in a regional Spelling Bee when I was eleven years old.Īctually, I made it to the local regional twice, in the fourth grade and fifth.
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