Spelling Bee Glows Beautiful When Nine-Year-Olds Take A Chance

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Cranium.

This was his word.

“Can you please give me the definition?” he asked.

Cranium. The part of the skull that encloses the brain.

“Cranium,” he said, pronouncing correctly, “C-R-A-N-I-U-M.”

And there it was. My young neighbor clinched his spot in Round Two of our county’s Spelling Bee tournament. After two and a half hours of watching nearly ninety contestants grope or breeze their way through their own Round One words, it was time my other neighbor and I headed home. We’d come to support and to witness the phenomena we’d only ever heard about. While we wouldn’t be there to see how things turned out, Round One was quite the experience for us uninitiated.

What did we see? We saw a linear unfolding of early-stage human willingness — second grade to sixth. These kids got up in front of an audience of parents and siblings, each one solo with no guardrail or lifeline, and spelled a word that didn’t conveniently sit in their memory from decades of life experience.

They did this thanks to all kinds of motivators — some aspirational, some not so much— but they were willing to do so. They were acting on an ask which wasn’t easy, and it was inspiring to watch. Here was our adult willingness to act in the face of desire or fear — or both — in its infancy on a high school auditorium stage.

I felt for these kids and was awed by them. Sometimes I even giggled. They were as amazing as they were hilarious. Or maybe the better word is dear.

Dear. This is a homophone. For this version, we use the definition: highly valued or precious. Dear.

The event got underway after the woman who ran the Bee gave everybody pertinent instruction and hardline law regarding the terms of this scholastic pageant. She painted none of it in flowery tone or ambiguous language. She made clear parental overzealousness, especially aggressive, had no home there. Spelling Bees ain’t no joke.

The spelling started with the 2nd graders, bless their precious little beings. They walked to center stage, took the microphone, and looked down at the judges’ table waiting for their word. Their hands were tiny, faces meek, and their tentative voices betrayed that they didn’t entirely grasp the gravity of the situation. This disappeared by 4th grade.

Soon a string of these seven-year-olds were plunking out letters to spell words they’d studied but in no way used when chatting at the kitchen table with their parents while eating their dinner. Over time, though, the idea is this will change.

The American National Spelling Bee became a thing in 1925 when local spelling bees were consolidated into a competition in Washington, D.C. That year, eleven-year-old Frank Neuhauser was the first winner, having correctly spelled gladiolus. What I find most interesting is that Wikipedia thought to inform us that second-place Edna Stover missed the win because she spelled gladiolus with a “y” instead of an “i”. This very detail I think captures the spelling bee culture, vibe, and event.

Letters matter — even one of them. More to the point, one hundred years later, a “y” still matters.

I thought my first spelling bee experience would center around the words. I like words. I think they’re interesting, so I was there for the unusual vocab list sure to be on display. Unfortunately, the words weren’t so unusual — as should be the case. The words were for the kids, not for me.

But then I noticed something I’d never seen before. I was watching the timeline of word knowledge play out in front of me. A child struggled to spell a word foreign to them that the adult in the audience might have used twice in the last week. It’s stunning to see this in front of you, on repeat. You see how much we didn’t used to know. You see how much of our adult knowledge we take for granted. Two brains are on display at a child’s spelling bee — the child’s and the adult’s.

The kids were the big surprise though. These children were out there in the raw, stepping up to the front of the stage in their frank selves. Because there were such a variety of personalities and body language, I got a sense that each child was a small representation of their family — a culmination if you will. They were beautiful, idiosyncratic, and fascinating.

In one vein, there seemed to be two types of spellers. The ones who asked for every possible spec of official information about their word and requested this as many times as was legal. And then the ones who were ready to get the heck back to their seat.

One girl stands out in my mind. She played her turn slow and deliberate. I’m sure it was her fear that was driving her, but in my mind, I pretended it was a comedy sketch. She was the tormenter and the judge her captive. Over and over again: Can you please use the word in a sentence? Can you please tell me its origin? Can you please tell me the definition again? She was playing with the judge just as the stage fright was playing with her.

If you don’t like repetition, do not, I repeat, do not go to your neighbor’s spelling bee competition.

But then there was the boy who waltzed up to center stage with one of his hands settled casually in his pocket and took the microphone from the kid who’d just spelled — or perhaps misspelled. Whether this was a tactic to calm nerves, who knows, but his casual haircut and casual demeanor, well, I loved this kid.

There were kids destined to be managers, techies, parents, and mentors. There was a youngster who bopped — nearly hopped — to the front spelling spot, took the mic with a flourish, spelled the word, and hightailed it out of there, bopping — nearly hopping — back to his seat. Then he flopped down as if nothing had happened. Who was that kid? Who will he be one day? What nook of the world will receive all his fabulous energy?

In a mere hour, a small second-grader with a teeny voice asked for the definition of his word, while later a tall sixth-grader with a voice deeper than some of the men in the audience boomed out his respectful requests of the judges. My neighbor and I said quietly in sync, “Whoa.” Such a range in voices, development, and people.

Some of these kids will continue with this extracurricular, studying definitions and etymologies, and memorizing spellings. Some will move on to other pursuits. But on that one night they were changed because they put themselves out there fully and took a chance. I don’t think knowing how to spell any word is as valuable as that because that’s worth more than words can say or spell.

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Have a nice rest of your week, friends.