P-E-R-C-O-L-A-T-O-R

[rfunk]

(Sorry, this is probably a bit more self-indulgent than usual....)

Tonight, for the first time, the national spelling bee championship will be televised. So this morning NPR interviewed the director of the spelling bee, who turns out to have been a spelling bee champion herself 25 years ago. The interview ended with the interviewer asking her to spell the word she won with back then. "sarcophagus - S-A-R-C-O-P-H-A-G-U-S"

This reminded me of my own word: percolator

21 years ago I participated in my school's spelling bee, with the theoretical potential to go all the way to the national championship. I ended up in second place. The word that killed me was "percolator", but I maintain that I only spelled it "perculator" because that's the way the woman announcing the words said it - "perk-you-lat*r". (Maybe I should be glad she didn't say "nucyular".)

Of course, getting only second place didn't ultimately make that much of a difference. All of us in the top three went to the district competition to go against the other school, and as I recall I got dropped much earlier there. I don't remember the word that killed me there, but I'll never forget "percolator".

Actually I'm not even sure anymore of my actual placing at each of the two competitions; I know I got second in one of them, but it may have actually been at district, somehow getting first at the school (though I know "percolator" was there). I know I ended up with a second-place trophy, a photo of the top three of us, and a good background for my later role as a small-newspaper copy editor at OSU.


I think if I'd gone on to the national championship I would've been incredibly nervous even without being on prime-time TV. I can't even imagine how horrible it would be for a kid in the televised competition tonight.

Comments

You know...

[kittenpants.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking about my kiss-of-death word yesterday. ceiling

I had such bad stage fright that I was sweating and on the verge of throwing up, passing out, or both. So I barrelled ahead without pausing to think.

I've been spectacularly twitchy about "i before e, except after c, or when sounding like 'ay' as in neighbor and weigh" ever since.

Re: You know...

[rfunk.livejournal.com]

I wonder if everyone remembers their killer word (or victory word for those rare few who win it all).

Seems to me that spelling bees are in a sense cruel because the top spellers at that age are likely to have the worst stagefright - they're the bookish ones, not usually the outgoing ones.

[(Anonymous)]

Is this a standard country-wide thing, because I don't remember there ever being one in any of my schools. ?:-/

standard?

[rfunk.livejournal.com]

It's an option for the school and community. According to the web site, it requires a local sponsor to set one up:

Each sponsor organizes a spelling bee program in its community, usually with the cooperation of area school officials. The champion of the sponsor's final spelling bee advances to the finals in Washington, D.C.

Sponsorship is available on a limited basis to daily and weekly newspapers serving English-speaking populations around the world.

In my case it was sponsored by the Columbus Dispatch

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