I'd Like To Buy A Vowel

This edition of The State of the Union originally appeared on June 1, 2001.  And, while I don’t usually make movie recommendations in this space, I saw “Akeelah and the Bee” this week, and thought it was really great.  And since the movie is loosely about the Scripps National Spelling Bee, I was inspired to run this column this week, both to encourage you to go see “Akeelah and the Bee” for yourself, but also to get you pumped for the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee, taking place on May 31 and June 1, and airing on ESPN.


I had settled in my comfy chair and was going through my usual pre-column finger calisthenics, prepared to write a humorous yet poignant advice column for First Daughter Jenna Bush on how to avoid getting busted for underage drinking, when the phone rang.

“Are you watching this?” my friend asked.  I figured there must be some exciting game on television, or perhaps a “Joanie Loves Chachie” marathon.

“Watching what?” I asked.

“The Spelling Bee,” my friend replied.  “It’s on ESPN2.”

Needless to say, I quickly leapt from my chair, raced to the couch and flicked on the television.  There on the screen a wild-haired young boy stood before a microphone, sweating.

“Could you please use the word in a sentence?” he asked.

In case you’ve never seen it before, let me describe briefly the spectacle that is the National Spelling Bee:  A hotel ballroom.  Endless rows of stackable, cloth-covered chairs.  And sweating through matching Scripps Howard polo shirts, 248 of the best young spellers this great nation has to offer.

When the event begins, each of those 248 youngsters is a winner, for as Rule 9 of the 74th Annual Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee eligibility requirements clearly states, participants “must be the individual champion (last one standing) of a sponsor’s final spelling bee.”  But when the gig is up, 247 of those “champions” will be “losers,” for in this battle of super spellers, there can be but one true champion.

One by one, the spellers approach the microphone, wielding nothing but their wits and the cardboard placards that hang from their necks.  And there they stand, some fidgeting, some twitching, some shifting uneasily, as the pronouncer, Dr. Alex J. Cameron, reads the words that will determine their fate.  Mugient.  Inesculent.  Hamartia.  Sometimes he’s assisted by Dr. Jacques A. Bailly, his associate pronouncer.  Hyoid.  Concinnity.  Mummery.

One by one, the pack thins.  Chrestomathy.  Pilchard.  Alkyd.  “Could I please have the language of origin?”  Epexegesis.  Orthoepy.  Macarize.  “Can I have a part of speech?”  Aleatoric.  Irenicism.  Zetetic.  “Are there any alternate pronunciations?”  Orismology.  Saltimbocca.  Zarzuela.

Soon only two spellers remain -- Sean Conley, a perpetually startled-looking 13-year-old from Minnesota, and Kristin Hawkins, a 13-year-old ponytailed sharpshooter from Virginia.

Watching the two of them do battle, I flashed back to my own spelling bee glory days.  In sixth grade, I was one of the final two spellers in my middle-school spelling bee.  A spelling-bee rookie, I had survived longer than all my fellow sixth graders, spelled better than all the eighth graders and outlasted all but one seventh grader, the gangly, pasty-faced geek who sat next to me on that auditorium stage.  Looking over at him nervously, I noticed that his socks didn’t match.  Aha!  An edge!  Imminent victory seemed certain.

And then I was standing before the demanding crowd, hundreds of my schoolmates gripped by the drama of the contest playing out before them.  I approached the microphone.  I was given my word.

I know this one, I thought.  I can do this.  This is easy.  I began to spell.

Somewhere between the beginning of the word and the end, my mind froze.  I tripped up.  I got it wrong.  I choked.

I misspelled “cinnamon.”

First, let me say that since that fateful day, I have never again misspelled that damnable spice.  C-I-N-N-A-M-O-N.  Second, let me say that sure, it looks easy to spell.  You just saw it spelled correctly.  But now put yourself back in sixth grade, standing up before an auditorium filled with your closest friends and mortal enemies, and pretend you didn’t just read the word twice.  Now try to spell “cinnamon.”

See?  Not so easy now, is it?

In the end, when the photographer from the local newspaper came to take the picture, we were both included, the gangly goober with the unruly hair holding his little plaque, and me, scrawny and a good six inches shorter than him, with my hair parted right down the middle (hey, it was the Eighties), empty-handed.

I still have that newspaper clipping somewhere.  But I never made it back to the top ten after that year.

My point is, I could relate to Sean and Kristin.  I had been in their shoes, in a way.  Granted, I had merely competed for the crown of spelling king of my middle school while they were vying for the title of best speller in the entire nation, and I had faced only the scorn or cheers of those souls bound to mandatory attendance in that airless middle-school auditorium while their success or failure would be reported by the national media and broadcast to the world on ESPN, but nevertheless, I felt like I understood them.  I felt their pain.

“Could you please repeat the definition?”

From Round 10 on, it was just the two of them.  They both nailed their words in Round 11, Round 12, Round 13.  Heading into Round 14, ESPN commentator Steve Cyphers whispered that Sean and Kristin were “trading punches like a couple of heavyweight champions.”

I couldn’t help but wonder how Cyphers ended up with the spelling-bee assignment.  Did he walk into the ESPN locker room one day, find his name on the lineup card next to “Spelling Bee,” and wonder what he had done wrong?

“Um, hey, guys?  Anybody want to do the play-by-play for this cool event in Washington, D.C.?  I’ll trade you for the World’s Strongest Man Competition.”

However it happened, Cyphers conducted himself as a professional throughout, never once calling the competition a “geekfest” or suggesting that “participants must not have been exposed to sunlight in the 12 months preceding the competition” was one of the eligibility requirements.

But I digress.

In Round 15, Kristin stumbled over “resipiscence,” a word which will no doubt haunt her the rest of her days like “cinnamon” haunts me.  Sean then calmly nailed “gallimaufry,” and in Round 16 correctly spelled “succedaneum” to seal the victory.

And so it was that Sean Conley, a young man who, according to his official biography taught himself to read at the age of two, became the 2001 National Spelling Champion.

The contest over, I hit the remote, clicked off the television and sighed, awash in a newfound feeling of positivity.  Indeed, with plucky young spellers like Sean and Kristin representing the future, our nation is clearly in good hands.  When I sat down again in my comfy chair, I knew I had myself a new column topic.

So Jenna, I’m sorry I didn’t get around to dispensing that advice I mentioned earlier.  I guess you’re just going to have to figure these things out on your own, like the rest of us.  One quick tip, though:

When your father is the President of the United States, trying to pawn yourself off as a 21-year-old by using somebody else’s driver’s license might not be the best strategy.