After watching his sister try three times to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Sameer Mishra put himself on a mission. “I told my mom I was going to do the bee,” Sameer said. “And if I was going to do it, I was going to win it one day. And I guess it happened.”
Did it ever. With the sister coaching him, Sameer augmented his spelling talent with a sense of humor that often kept the Grand Hyatt Ballroom audience laughing. The 13-year-old from West Lafayette, Ind., was finally all business when he aced “guerdon” — an appropriate word, given that it means “something that one has earned or gained” — to win the 81st bee Friday night.
Remember that spelling bee I participated in awhile back? I never recapped.
Eight hundred of my closest friends and family showed up to see us participate in the partial charity event, all of whom managed to feign interest even though the bee lasted twice as long as it should have. My team was sandwiched between a cadre of five year old girls with ribbons in their hair (who resigned from the competition due to group infighting and stage fright) and a group from the local tv station who dressed better than we did and totally kicked our asses.
Our team was booted in the third or fourth round when the word announcer, a local politician whose claim to fame is holiday and other theme-related, head-to-toe costumes at public events, also the ukelele, failed to pronounce our word correctly. The word was either homogenous or homogeneous, but was pronounced homo-genius and we decided to go with the former spelling because it was early in the competition and the words were debatably easier. We were wrong. The sparkly announcer continued to mispronounce words throughout the rest of the competition. Ethan thought we should protest on principle, but we declined.
The winning team was a group of middle schoolers who attend the school across the street from me. They were confident, poised, and gloated appropriately for having just beaten the shit out of a bunch of well-educated, well-meaning adults with too much free time on a Saturday. One of them was Sameer Mishra, the winner of the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee.
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I love you.
This is why we failed.
Also note that I am lazy enough to not correct it.
You know, I was still wondering what happened with that spelling bee. That’s a pretty fantastic story. No shame in being beaten by the best young speller in the country.
Amazing! That’s an awesome story.