Me and the Bee

Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in a spelling bee competition. The event was coordinated by a local charity whose programs include, among others, Adult Literacy; part of this agency’s funding is provided by the Lanark County chapter of the United Way. I volunteer as a Board Member of another non-profit organization called the Ontario Early Years Centre/Children’s Resources on Wheels. Since we also obtain funding from the United Way, our group received, and accepted, an invitation to participate in this fundraiser. There were a total of five teams, most with 3 team members. The team in the picture here was representing a youth services group for a local community.

I thought I should get ready so I rented Akeelah and the Bee which is an awesome movie about the Scripps National Spelling Bee Competition in the USA. Akeelah is an 11-year old girl with a gift for words, who attends an inner city school in Los Angeles. A series of events lands Akeelah in the school's first-ever spelling bee to avoid detention. She sweeps the contest, qualifying for a place in the regional spelling bee. Under the mentorship of Dr. Larabee (played by Laurence Fishburne), Akeelah earns her place at the Scripps National Spelling Bee and brings some unexpected, but much needed attention to her school. The movie tells an inspirational story of how Akeelah's desire and belief in herself influences the lives of those around her including her mother, her classmates and her coach, Dr. Larabee. Oh, and me too.

As inspiring as the story was, I have to admit it made me more than a little nervous. The kids in the movie study and spell words I’ve never heard of before like elucubrate and pulchritude (and those were the easy ones I could remember and spell here in my blog). The words we got at our spelling bee were much easier -- effervescent, fluorescent, aubergine, matriarchy, pharmaceutical. Words not normally hard to spell, particularly if your computer is set to auto-correct and your spell-checker is functional. That said, the word accommodation was on the list and I almost always spell that one wrong.

The trick, it turns out, isn't spelling the word correctly, but rather saying the letters correctly into the microphone. Some of those words are l-o-n-g and if you get distracted, it's pretty easy to lose your place. I had to close my eyes and see the word choreography in my mind's eye while I spelled it into the mike. I felt like a dope but -- hey -- whatever works. You have to concentrate because the rules dictate that you can start over, but you can't change the order of the letters that you have already spelled. What good is that? If you make a mistake, you can't self-correct.

We quickly exhausted the word list and were soon presented with a list of words that nobody uses in polite conversation. We really could have used a 12-year-old Scripps speller on our team. As it was, it was me and the ED at the Bee. We spelled our words correctly but when it came to reciting the letters into the microphone, our fearless leader misspoke. Unable to self-correct was the stinger for our team.

We brought home the bronze.