Once a Spelling Bee champ…not always a Spelling Bee champ

So those of you who knew me back in the day — or simply had a conversation with me where this came up (as it seems to an an unusually high amount of instances) — know that I was a Spelling Bee champion. In 8th grade, I won my school spelling bee. I went on to participate in the District 25 (holla!) championship, which I also won. I wish I remembered the word. . .I remember spelling it and thinking I had it wrong, but what was it… Hmmm. Anyway, I then went to the New York City Spelling Bee Championship — and my entire 8th grade class (plus my 2 best friends who weren’t in my class, and got slack for it) got to come be in the audience! I received a shiny plaque and an XXL gleaming blue jacket with gold trim, and across the back in gold it reads: Daily News Spelling Bee Champ.

So to bring this story to present day, a few weeks ago I am in someone’s office to work on my company’s Employee Giving Campaign events. One of our events is a Spelling Bee. The guy whose office it was begins to brag about how one of his employees (who was sitting in the office with me) was the Bonham Elementary School in Texas spelling bee champion. As he is gloating, I felt my pride sinking away. In an effort to reclaim my rightful champion role, I exclaim, “I WAS MY SCHOOL AND DISTRICT CHAMPION, AND I WENT TO THE CITY CHAMPIONSHIP!”

Uhhh yeah. Bad move. They then forced me to participate in the work spelling bee against my will. But at least I had my pride. I worked very hard to prepare for the bee. No, I didn’t study. I didn’t review words. What I did was actual work for the campaign. I sat on the floor of my cube and cut ribbon (which I bought myself) and made numbers for the contestants to wear around their necks. I wrote and put together the look of emails and website pages to promote the event. I even took motion sickness pills and elevatored it to about 100 floors to post fliers. Those fliers turned my left boob purple on my favorite work shirt ever. Oh, how I suffered for the Bee.Cut to today – Spelling Bee day! Keep in mind that I do not want to win. I hate being in front of people, I have bad anxiety, I just don’t want to do it.  So my first word is “words.” I correctly spelled it. In the end after a few rounds I got eliminated, more because of the nerves of being up there than not knowing the word, since it was a word I knew and have even used (or maybe just thought about) once. And although I did not win a trophy, I still got a trophy. We were planning on having a Spelling Bee in our Hopewell, NJ office, but only one person there wanted to participate. So we invited him here. And he won. And he left us with two Hopewell trophies. One of which I have in my posession. So if anyone asks, I was second place in the Hopewell Spelling Bee 2007.Also, I’m fat. There was lunch provided and a BAKE SALE there. Someone made the best pound cake ever. I now want to die.And in case you were wondering, the other spelling champion got eliminated before I did! Also, in case you were wondering, she is first place in the Hopewell Spelling Bee 2007. So what’s the lesson here? Just because you can spell in 8th grade does not mean you can spell once MS Word and spell check come out.