Why I now will mark “be a spelling-bee moderator” off my list of “Things That Sound Really Easy and Fun and I Bet I’d Be Good At.” — from my upcoming column in the Daily Corinthian’s weekly Community Profiles edition
She said it was going to be easy. She said I wouldn’t have any problem at all.
“All you have to do is read the words,” my friend said. “Just read the words. Easy, easy, easy.”
Of course, when somebody works this hard to convince you that something’s “easy,” you perhaps should ask questions.
But I was so flattered she’d asked me to call the words at the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools district spelling bee in Columbus that I said “Sure! I’d love to!” before I could spell out “maybe I should think about this first.”
I’ve always been fascinated with spelling bees because – and I’m embarrassed to admit this – I’ve never been to one. When my daughters, 27 and 25, were younger, the hours we’d spend studying weekly spelling lists turned them off spelling for fun and they consequently avoided any chance of getting caught up in a spelling bee. So without any real-life experience, my only knowledge came from TV, where stern and somber-looking adults quizzed children relentlessly, and the Broadway musical “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” where people jump around and sing a lot.
I hoped my spelling bee would fall somewhere in the middle – while leaning toward the jumping-around and singing side.
Turns out, though, I was the one meant to provide the fun and good cheer.
“We need somebody who’s sweet and nice to call the words,” my friend said. “We don’t want to intimidate the children. You are the nicest and non-scariest person I know.”
Completely captivated by the image of myself as a smiling and benevolent word-giver, charmingly patting the grateful children on their heads, I couldn’t wait until the competition.
And here let me say that I thoroughly intended to carefully study and research every word on the list my friend gave me a few days before the bee. I did look over the pages and I did pronounce the words … to myself … in my head … well, most of the words. But since the words got progressively difficult and folks assured me the student spellers rarely got to the most advanced level, I didn’t worry about the super hard ones. I mean, what are the chances I’d have to correctly pronounce the words “hoomalimali,” “pickelhaube” and “Baedeker” and use them in sentences?
If I started stumbling, I told myself, I’d fall back on my role as the sweet smiling non-intimidator. Surely that would be enough.
Nope. It wouldn’t. Because these kids meant business. We quickly found ourselves in the advanced, extremely difficult, you-will-never-ever-use-this-word-in-real-life sections. And they were smarter than me – at least, they apparently had studied the list instead of watching reruns of “The Office” and “Cougar Town” as I maybe did. One speller after another questioned my definitions and corrected my pronunciations – even familiar words such as “taupe” and “ersatz” are minefields when you have to enunciate them in front of eagle-eared parents. The intimidation factor rose steadily as the spellers looked at me pityingly and proceeded to demolish every advanced word we had. The organizer had to call spelling-bee headquarters for more words and I wondered if I should retreat to the snack room and let one of the kids take over.
Thankfully, we took a half-time break and the judges gave me a pep talk.
“You’re doing fine,” they said. “But toughen up. Don’t smile so much. Be a little intimidating.”
Their advice worked. When I stopped tentatively requesting that the students spell a word and started authoritatively telling them to do so, the competition flowed much more smoothly and everybody seemed happier.
But I think I’ll rest “a spell” before I try this again.
Husband JP and I are newspaper geeks. We met at a newspaper — 
Sidelines, the student newspaper at Middle Tennessee State University, in Murfreesboro, Tenn. We work for newspapers — he’s actually fortunate enough to get a regular paycheck from one. We talk and post and discuss and argue about newspapers (and also whose turn it is to clean out the cat boxes and which one of us forgot to buy beer). And we buy newspapers — you know, the old-fashioned kind made of paper — everywhere we go. When we travel, our hotel room is littered with newspapers. We take stacks into restaurants (although not the really good ones). We pile them in the back seat of the car and haul them home for additional perusal. In doing all this, we stumble across some fascinating things. Such as the fact that the May 27 edition of the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press — the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend — weighed in at an incredible 2 pounds and, when folded, was 1 1/2 inches deep. This is, we calculated, about four times bigger than your average regular daily paper and seemed mainly due to an inordinately large amount of advertising inserts. Most papers, it seemed to us, had a lighter number of inserts for Memorial Day Sunday. Anyway, this is the sort of stuff that fascinates us. Just wait until you hear our discussion on Times Roman versus Times New Roman.
Coffee with Cathy 