An American in Provence

One of my more embarrassing moments from High School was when I decided to take part in a regional spelling contest. I think I was a Sophomore, or maybe a Junior.

I spent a couple of weeks reviewing lists of words, and one Saturday, my Civics teacher drove me and another girl Erin down to another High School in Colorado Springs where the competition was being held. We formed a team, so first one of us would spell a word, then the next round the other one would.

We got there, and there weren't many people. Spelling contests aren't the most popular thing in town I guess. There were maybe five other teams.

We sat up on stage, with our teacher in the audience. The person in charge explained the rules. You could repeat the word out loud, but once you started to spell, if you made a mistake you couldn't go back and fix it.

I went first. The word I received was seedling.

I repeated it a few times.

"Seedling. Seedling. See - I mean Ess -e -e -d -l- -i -n -g"

Nope. It was over. Just like that. We were finished. First word, first round. I was so embarrassed. Poor Erin never even got a chance.

The winning word was something like "spinach". Give me a break.

Sigh. So that was my brief attempt at spelling contests.

The end.