Posts
When I spent a whirlwind week in
But the highlight of the week was the Mississippi Pizza Pub Adult Spelling Bee. Designed as a way to fill the little pub on otherwise dead Monday nights, the spelling bee has been a runaway success. The night we were there, all the tables were filled with pizza-eating, beer-drinking would-be contestants. I have to say that "Adult Spelling Bee" referred to the age of the contestants and not to the naughtiness of the words, though that could have been interesting (one n or two in cunnilingus?).
Our
Sari and I talked to the organizer ("Katherine with a K") beforehand, and when she learned we were from out of town (and out of country) she made sure we got to the stage. (There are always more applicants than there are spaces on the platform.)
Sixteen of us sat on chairs on the little raised dais, holding laminated cards with our numbers for the evening. The rules were not stringent, but we were cautioned to repeat the word, then spell it (correctly), then repeat it again, just as they do in the official national spelling bee held in
In front of Katherine were two beer pitchers filled with paper slips, one with easier words, for the first three rounds of the contest, and the other containing the words for the final rounds. Both pitchers held a strange combination of words: very simple words (coulis, execution, conciliating) mixed with bizarre words, such as gurry (the debris left after the butchering of a whale—and isn't THAT a word you'll use every day?). Katherine had a few problems with pronunciation, exacerbated by the rough speaker system; "cantatrice" sounded like "conchatrichay".
The contestants were mostly 20-year-olds, with a sprinkling of older people. The man who sat next to me was a previous champion who had come back for a new round of bees. A sour-faced older man with white hair made it through the first three rounds but was eliminated after the intermission. Sari got knocked out by conciliating (she says she wouldn't have gotten confused if it had been "conciliatory").
At the break (time for more beer), I was still in the running. My cheering section kept saying, "You're going to win!", but I didn't believe them. I wanted a glass of water, but the counter was too crowded with beer-buyers, so I went without.
Back on stage, with the six or seven remaining contestants, I really wished I'd found some water. It's hard to spell with a dry throat. Katherine pulled the pitcher with the difficult words over to her and drew the first slip of paper. I had expected to hear words that are difficult to spell, the kind you mull over before writing them down (i.e., ei or ie, l or ll, i or y). But the words were the same mixture as those from the earlier rounds: mundane but polysyllabic words interspersed with unheard-of words from specialized vocabularies.
The contestants dwindled rapidly, and I was gratified that no abstruse words were thrown my way. And finally, I was left on stage with one other contestant. At this point the rules changed: if either of us missed a word, the other had to spell it correctly and then spell one more word in order to win. We both missed "paragogy". Then Katherine read out "twall" for him. I couldn't figure it out at first, but once she defined it, I knew. He spelled it as she had pronounced it: "twall". Then I spelled it "toile." Now all I had to do was spell my last word. What would it be?
Anticlimax of all anticlimaxes, my final word was "bibliotherapy." Anyone could have spelled it! So I won, but without any great feeling of accomplishment.
My prize was a black t-shirt with "CHAMPION: Mississippi Pizza Spelling Bee" on the back. I'll wear it with pride, but I'd feel even prouder if my last word had been more challenging than "biblliotherapy."
No comments:
Post a Comment