Pajiba

NEEEEERDS

I have a knack for spelling and seldom need a dictionary.
However, in my 5th grade year I bombed out of the school-wide spelling be by spelling "cedar" c-e-d-e-r.
The buzzer is indeed cruel.
Never participated again.

Nonetheless, I love the spelling bee kids.

Oh my gosh. I was SO close to being in this when I was in sixth grade. Got knocked out in one of the last rounds in our state's finals.

....but I swear I wasn't some kind of crazy genius who read the dictionary in my room all day! Just a good speller. I never, ever would have lasted in this this thing.

I'm embarrassed having revealed that.

Spelling Bee. SPELLING BEE, godammit.

There's my laugh for the night.

Why can't the Spelling Bee have a Miss/Mr. Wispy Mustache award?
It could be their version of the Miss Congeniality award.

It must be like playoffs branded. They don't shave until they win or are knocked out.

I remember when I used to skip basketball practices to watch the spelling bee. Man were my priorities ever in the right place.

I also ended up one word from the scripps one in elementary school. Bantam, stupid short word tripped me up.

They don't shave until they win or are knocked out.

That's hilarious! I'm glad the spellers' union is stricter than baseball players' union, and all these kids are piss-tested for performance enhancing inhalers.

When they win, they get a cooler full of Ovaltine dumped over their head.

(Full disclosure: I was a math/chem double major)

I remember this.... I made it to my schoolwide competition and was knocked out on my first word, too. I was in sixth grade, and my word was fucking "philobiblist."

I haven't once seen that word used since--not spoken out loud, nor in the shitloads of books and articles I've read. I'll never forget how they tried to make an eleven-year-old spell some ridiculously obscure term for "book lover." (I just googled it and there are only 2,410 results!)

what was the winning word?

Made it to the State Regionals before the Scripps National Bee when I was in junior high. Got out on "acclimatization." Cried backstage. Surprisingly I didn't have a tutor or anything, I read a lot growing up and was just naturally good at spelling. We studied the little booklet they gave us for two weeks and that was it. A lot of it is sheer nerves....the year before I was terrified and got knocked out on "drawer." Got my BFA in Creative Writing so the spelling came in handy later on ;-)

P.S. Now it's all homeschooled and Indian kids that win. No exaggeration.

I'm happy for the tip of the hat to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. And no spelling bee is complete without some musical love:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCoZYKaK4u0

Aw, I love Spellbound to freaking pieces. Those kids just KILL me. Especially that little girl from Washington, DC who, while all the other kids got free trips to the nation's capital, had to take the Metro to the Bee.

I am an okay speller, but nowhere close to this league. I went to regionals twice and lost on stupid words: "banns" one year and then "breech" (I spelled the wrong way for the way they used it in a sentence) the next. I still hold a grudge against those words.

I was in a spelling bee in 4th grade, and carried around a blank ledger to write the words given to each contestant for practice. I got pretty far, and even though I wrote it down correctly down on my ledger, I misspelled the word "church."

I can't explain how, but it felt humiliating.

Nothing to do with a bee (participated in one in 7th grade, came in second for the school), but on an SAT II essay, I completely blanked and forgot how to spell "of."

No bullshit. I put down "uv" as a placeholder (seriously) and eventually came up with the right spelling with a few minutes remaining.

I remember being in a bee in grade school (just the school itself, which totaled, K-8, about 300 students). I don't recall how far I got, though I'm sure it wasn't far as I was mortally terrified of speaking in front of crowds. I was an excellent speller, though I went to Catholic school, where both phonics (just the regular kind, sorry Steven) AND spelling were taught.
I CANNOT BELIEVE the kids in my college classes who are just out of high school who have no concept of correct spelling or grammar. Who actually ASK, "does spelling count?" The professor in my current class was assigning a paper this week and said, "And before you ask, yes, spelling counts, and grammar counts. You are grown ups now, and this is college" but totally not in a mean way. I have a little crush on her.

P.S. Now it's all homeschooled and Indian kids that win. No exaggeration.

Color me completely U-N-S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E-D.

I made it to regionals in 7th grade and lost on the word "hoard." Even though they used it in a sentence, I was reading a lot of sci-fi/fantasy at the time and could not imagine it spelled any other way than in relation to, like, a horde of goblins or something (if only I had been reading about dragons and treasure hoards!). Dammit. At least I spelled the wrong word correctly.

Made the finals for our county in 6th grade. Dropped out because the wait time in between being called up to spell something was brutal. Seriously, I couldn't just SIT there and wait my turn. I don't do suspense and I'm not a nervous person so it really just boiled down to me not being able to sit still and quietly for 20 minutes at a clip.
Same still holds true...

I can identify with the "of" problem. In second grade, I was writing, when I realized I couldn't remember how to spell "the". Even in second grade, I realized it would be too humiliating to ask the teacher or my peers how to spell such a simple word. I kept saying it over and over to myself, and my brain couldn't make sense of it.
Glad I wasn't trying to complete the SAT's at the time!
Still remember the time in a fifth grade classroom spelling bee, "embarrass" nearly took down all of us. I had heard all the incorrect attempts by the time it got to me, so I timidly offered up the correct spelling. Feels good even now!

4th grade, "balloon" as "baloon". Heartbreaking. And humiliating.

I'm a good speller, I admit. Lots of drills and tests as a kid. While I'm sure I could've been reading the classics instead of memorizing how to spell words, I am grateful that I learned at a young age how to be fussy about that kind of thing. Anna, I'm with you - spelling and grammar are pretty appalling these days. I'm not trying to be a pedantic pain-in-the-ass, a la "In my day, we had tablets to double-check our spelling, not Spellcheck!", but I'm continually amazed by words that people straight-up don't know how to spell and, more important, never look up how to spell. It takes 45 seconds to go to dictionary.com to check on your spelling. Seriously.