2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee

(Originally posted May 26, 2009)

Okay people. Gather 'round. It’s my favorite soap opera of the year. Unlike many sports, which often have multi-month-long seasons, this one event is televised for just two days a year. So indulge me.

The 2009 Scripps National Spelling Bee is going on as I write. Fully 293 spellers have already taken a written test of 50 words. On Wednesday, all of them get the chance to sit onstage, approach the microphone, see the glare of the lights in their face, hear camera shutters clinically click shut, and spell a word for the world to hear. For two rounds. Then, in a cruel and brutish manner, the field will be slashed to no more than 50, as determined by their performance up to that point. Those few will continue on to Thursday morning, competing on ESPN for the opportunity to be broadcast live on ABC that evening. With skill, composure, and more than a little luck, one will eventually hoist the trophy and wield the title of best speller in the nation.

So why my passion for the National Spelling Bee? Simple. I won the whole shebang twenty years ago. I outlasted 221 of my fellow competitors over the span of two agonizing days. Unlike the bee nowadays, the entire competition was oral in 1989. It was also sometimes agonizingly slow…it was an endurance test just to sit on stage for one round that lasted over two hours, just to spell one word. But the end result was an accomplishment I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to eclipse. The best in the nation in your field of study? You can't top that. But it took a career spanning five years to get there.

So what about these kids? Are they bookworms? Nerds? Geeks? Well, yeah, some of ‘em. But really, the bee is more of a gathering of some really intelligent kids who also have lives. Interesting ones. Athletes. Mallrats. Musicians. Photographers. Wakeboarders. Artists. Aspirants to become the next Dale Earnhart, Jr. You get the idea. And they all get my unqualified respect.

From this exceptionally tense and short week, these kids will forge lifelong friendships. Many of them will, for the first time, not feel out of place or weird or be treated like an outcast because they are smart or because they study too much. They'll be among peers who are the same way, and they will quickly learn to celebrate their intelligence, rather than shrink from it. Parents, no matter how well-meaning, cannot teach this lesson as well as friends can.

As a speller's dad put it in the excellent documentary Spellbound, in sports, you get extra chances all the time. Like baseball. You strike out in the first inning? You’ll get up to bat again in the third, the sixth, and maybe the ninth inning. No problem. But with the spelling bee, should you blurt out one letter that’s wrong, that’s it. You’re out. Sayonara. Not even if you go back and spell the word correctly…what came out of your mouth the first time is what stands. It’s a fair but merciless rule, and I’ve seen disaster strike numerous times from it, like the boy who accidentally started “mayonnaise” with an “a.” Or the girl who began “m-a-u-s-e…” before just walking off stage, knowing that she couldn’t take back that “e” while attempting “mausoleum.” Or tragically enough, the girl who was the only one eliminated in the first round of the 1987 national bee because she accidentally said "j" instead of "g" when given "germproof." (She immediately corrected herself, but to no avail. And I think many of us who saw her would have voted to keep her in, including myself.)

As you’d imagine, the pressure that goes on during this bee is INSANE. I’ve been there, and I don’t envy these kids a single bit. How nervewracking is it to be front and center, underneath the spotlight of national TV as you try to get through some word you can barely pronounce, and may never hear again in any discernible context for the rest of your life? Under a time constraint, no less? It's scary as hell. I know one kid who was unable to sit on stage because of awful stomach cramps from the stress; he had to be practically carried out on stage so he could spell when his turn came. Another one was so freaked by the lights and the overconfidence of a nearby competitor that she had to sit offstage as well. (She was eliminated that year, but came back the next year and won.) And a third actually fainted a few years back, in frighteningly real (and very publicly televised) fashion…then placed second. Kids come off the stage bawling in some cases after missing words. It's heartcrushing.

There’s a reason that when spellers are eliminated and escorted offstage, they go to a sanctuary called the “comfort room.” Here, they can cry till all the tears dry up, have a pop and some cookies, get hugs, kisses, and support from loved ones, and consult the dictionary to see that really, the word that was their downfall is in there. In one of the best policies of the whole bee, the press is strictly forbidden from entering this room. Got a deadline to meet? Sorry…can’t do an interview until your speller comes out, even if it takes them an hour to face the music again.

But having said that, I was on the National Spelling Bee staff for a few years, and as stressful as it is to be on stage spelling, I found it more difficult to be sitting on the sidelines. At least if you’re on stage, you know immediately if you have the word right, or if you think you might be able to figure it out. You have at least some control of your destiny in this case, and it happens (if you’re lucky) a majority of the time. Parents may have it worst, not being able to control how their kids perform - and sometimes not even knowing if their son or daughter spelled a word right because they themselves don't know how to spell it. At least until the judges nod or the dreaded bell dings.

As for the bee itself…boring? Hardly. Fascinating. Yes, I’m biased, but many people have seen just how impossible it is not to get caught up in the tension and try to spell those skullbusters themselves. It’s drama of the best sort, with raw emotions shown by spellers who have yet to perfect their poker face, and that damned bell that dings if they trip up (and which has surely given more than one speller nightmares). Don’t believe me? Check out Spellbound. Watch Akeelah and the Bee. Watch the national bee live on Thursday night on ABC. You won’t be disappointed.