You Never Forget Your Last

Ann, the Spelling Bee makes me squirm too, sometimes. But it also makes me want to jump up and down—kind of like those hyperactive contestants—and squeal, because I love spelling bees so much.

Maybe I'm culturally wired for it: As the Washington Post noted on Tuesday, spelling bees have a special place in Indian-American nerd culture. ("In the same way that Hakeem Olajuwon's success in the NBA inspired a generation of Nigerians to take up basketball, Sidharth, Sameer and Kavya can trace their roots to Balu Natarajan of Chicago, who in 1985 became the first Indian-American national bee champion.") I'm still not really sure what quirk of cultural evolution we owe this to, but seven of tonight's 11 finalists seem to be of South Asian descent—including my girl and fellow Miller Junior High Mustang, Ramya Auroprem. (Class of 1994 has your back, R!)

I get why Stefan Fatsis at the Daily Beast feels the televised finals are exploitative, and maybe I'll feel differently when I make the leap over to the other side of the parent-child divide. But at the moment I feel a lot of pride and excitement, both as a former nerdy kid and as an immigrant's child. As the great documentary Spellbound made clear, for a lot of people—not just South Asians—participating in the the Bee can be a kind of shorthand for achieving the American dream.

Spelling bees are also something I always connected not just with childhood, but specifically with girlhood. Maybe that's just because I happened to meet my best friend—also an Indian girl—when she beat me in the 6th-grade district bee, or because my local spelling nemesis was a boy (also Indian) whom I simultaneously had a wild crush on. But I know that when I saw Spellbound, I remember wishing that I could have seen Nupur Lala, the girl who would go on to win, when I was young enough to have her as a role model. Lala was a smart girl who wore her brains lightly, never apologizing for her gifts—or the eccentricity of her chosen playing field—but always managing to seem ... well ... cool. Collected. (And of course, when she says in the documentary trailer, simply and plainly, "You don't get any second chances in India, the way you do in America," I bawl. EVERY time.)

They say you never forget you first, but spellers never forget their last. Echelon, my losing word in the 6th grade, is forever burned into my brain. (I added an s, thinking it was Germanic.) I feel pretty certain we have plenty of former competitors in the Double X readership—care to share your spelling bee flame-outs?

Photograph of Kavya Shivashankar by Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images.

Tags: Indian-Americans, kids, spelling, Television

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Nina Shen Rastogi California native, theater and comics fan, Slate "Green Lantern" columnist

Comments

Last month I got a wrenching

By: acotas548 | Mon, 08/10/2009 - 00:49

Last month I got a wrenching phone message from a woman who cleans apartments in New York City. Not someone who was dating a laid-off banker or had her sushi allowance cut. A maid. Did I know anyone who might hire her? Apartment 5F lost his job, 5B had to move to Texas for work, and 10A had to spend her extra funds for a sick mother. I called her back. She told me that she and her husband of 40 years are about to lose their house.
Adison High School

Great sharing. I am too shy

By: ninanina | Thu, 08/06/2009 - 01:30

Great sharing. I am too shy to give speech, unless it is only for a few people and I am expert in the topic. classified ads |part time jobs |steam shower

"Achieve"

By: pfeytser | Sun, 05/31/2009 - 18:29

If there's one thing I didn't do in the spelling bee...

Spelling Bee

By: jjq | Sat, 05/30/2009 - 08:58

Sigh...7th Grade. I missed college. Can you believe it? I was very shy then. I did eventually get AA and Bachelor's degrees. But a little mad that Mom hadn't even discussed college with me in 7th grade....then perhaps I could have spelled it!

behemoth and fervorous

By: alana777 | Sat, 05/30/2009 - 08:24

In the finals of the CO state spelling bee in seventh and eighth grades, respectively. :-) I had never heard the word "behemoth," so I thought it was related to "bohemian" and spelled it as such.

The following year, having made it into the oral finals again, I kicked myself instantly after spelling "ferverous," remembering that the middle vowel should've been an "o." Aah, spelling bee days. . .you really don't ever get them back.

"Spatterdock"

By: myspi | Fri, 05/29/2009 - 23:10

You're right, Nina. I don't really remember any of my winning words during my spelling bee days, but I remember mispelling spatterdock (a type of aquatic plant) with by spelling it with only one 't'. I had made it to the second round of the 1989 statewide spelling bee for North Carolina and I was in the 6th grade. At least I received a handy little dictionary (which I still use) for my efforts.

Going to the national bee would've been cool, to say the least. It would've been an awesome present since my 12th birthday was during the 1989 national bee.

I do have fond memories of those days. I met my friend Gerry, who was in the 7th grade at the time, when I beat him during our middle school bee. We ended up being good friends during high school and we went to the same college.

Aluminum

By: Jeff Fecke | Fri, 05/29/2009 - 22:40

But only because of the stupid rules. I said it, and started to spell it, and for some reason, came out with "A,U...." I stopped, said "Shoot," and then spelled it correctly. Alas, rules being rules, I had started with A-U, therefore I was wrong.

Juicily

By: ms_lbd | Fri, 05/29/2009 - 21:05

In 7th grade, I made it to our county finals... and was taken down by this word. An adverb, which I'm not even sure is fair game in a spelling bee. And I still can't figure out how to use it in a sentence. I was robbed.

Lackadaisical

By: SouthernLiberal | Fri, 05/29/2009 - 15:34

I believe this was for my school-wide spelling bee when I was in 5th grade, maybe 4th. I made it quite far and was really excited because I had never won anything like that before. I believe there were only two other kids left and they gave me "lackadaisical." I had studied the word packet prior to the bee, but it was so thick and I didn't remember that word. I actually got it close, but as we know in spelling bees, close is not enough. Man, I was so disappointed. I was actually telling my husband all about it the other day, inspired by the new Scripps winner. He just kind of laughed at me for having been so upset over the experience.

"Abominable"

By: Jen Sorensen | Fri, 05/29/2009 - 13:06

I was the reigning spelling bee champ until my hateful sixth-grade teacher dropped this abomination on me. Having watched way too many Looney Tunes cartoons in which stuttering characters (either Bugs or Sylvester) pronounced it "abominidible," I was doomed.