The Bee And Me

The heat of the spotlight. The click-click of a thousand camera shutters. The attention of a worldwide audience.

A description of Hollywood stardom? Maybe, in my dreams.

A description of my life as a competitor in the Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee? A dream that came true. Three times.

Standing alone on the world stage of spelling, I know that that moment is the culmination of years of study, hour after grueling hour of preparation. Since that fateful day in fourth grade when Sister Nilda ordered each of us to stand and spell "laundry" or "nightmare" or "cascade" in turn, I embarked on the quest for orthographical glory. "'Kay, you ready?" my mother asked, as she cracked open the fresh edition of Paideia, a pamphlet of about five-thousand subject-categorized words, updated and distributed annually by the Bee for use in district championships. "Ugh," I groaned, shifting my eyes. Spelling came naturally to me; why should I spend my time learning the etymology of "syzygy" or the correct pronunciation of "schadenfreude" (both words which Microsoft Word so diligently underlines in red) while my middle-school friends play video games after school and soccer games on the weekend?

I appreciated neither the hardship of preparation nor the urgings of my mother until, with "h-o-r-t-a-t-i-v-e" uttered correctly from my twelve-year-young lips, I grasped the county spelling trophy, and a shot at triumph in Washington, D.C. That year, and for the following two years, I reigned as champion of Broward County, an ambassador to the Bee and a connoisseur of words. Each Bee Week, I met spellers from every nook and cranny of the nation and beyond: kids, just like me, gathering in the Grand Hyatt's lobby to study Paideia, in the Independence Concourse to discover obscure definitions in Webster's Third, by the self-playing piano to analyze Nat's Notes together. My