today was the National Spelling Bee, won by 14-year old David Tidmarsh from Indiana. congratulations to him, great spellers are a dying breed (as are people who employ proper grammar)...
when i was in 4th grade, i won my elementary school's spelling bee, beating out even the 5th graders! whoa, was am i a smarty pants. i next went to the area bee and was promptly dismissed in the 2nd round. three years later, in the 7th grade, i was school bee runner up to Shannon (whom i still know to this day and who was in my wedding, actually).
finally, 8th grade; my last chance to be the best speller in the United States. so i beat out Scott L (who, at the time, was such a cutie) by spelling permanent correctly and won the school bee... on to area, where i rolled along quite easily until it was down to the final two. i had to spell "squalid", and since i never ever studied the spelling words, i had never heard that word. *sigh* i spelled it wrong, and the other girl (i can see her face now, but i don't remember her name -- UPDATE: her name was Danielle) spelled it correctly, wah. she went on to spell some other easy word correctly (elder, maybe?)... the good news is that both the winner and the runner-up from area go to regionals, so i still had a shot...
STUPID DOUBLE-C WORDS!! acclaim. acclaim! a-c-c-l-a-i-m, not a-c-l-a-i-m, dufus! i got 21st out of 42 and stayed in Texas instead of going to D.C. for the BIG ONE.
alas, thus ended my National Spelling Bee champ dreams.
Hey! Don't think badly of me, but I clicked over when I saw that you'd won the t-shirt contest at IMAO! LOL That's really wild about your spelling history because I also won my 5th grade and 7th grade spelling bees (got canned in the county bee both times) and was runner-up in the 8th grade. My downfall? CONGRATULATIONS
Yep, you guessed it, I made the first T a D (like apparently alot of people do). You can be sure that I've never misspelled it again! :)
Posted by: Skerdog | Monday, June 07, 2004 at 06:04 PM
um, if i were going to think badly of you for clicking over from IMAO, i'd have to think badly of myself for modeling the t-shirts. :)
well, congraDulations on being able to spell it correctly now; at least we've learned from our mistakes, i know i will never misspell "acclaim" again.
Posted by: sarahk | Monday, June 07, 2004 at 08:38 PM