Wide-eyed with fear, he approaches the microphone. As the mediator gives him the word "alopecoip" to spell, the weight of the phonetic world crashes down upon him and the kid goes down like a ton of bricks. F-A-I-N-T-S! His fellow contestants don't even offer to help him, a sign of the cut-throat nature of spelling bees. Survival of the fittest, man!
Amazingly, the kid gets on his feet like nothing happened, spells the word, and sits down! See the video here!
Which brings us to this year's spelling bee! I offer you a chance to ride the coat tails of some homeschooled kid with
1-Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan-Number 36-Gotta go with the hometown favorite, baby! Even though she's only in sixth grade, the fact she can spell her own name says something about her skills!
2-Aliya Robin Deri-Number 21-She's from California, which has a lot of people so she must have had to beat out a lot of scrubs to make it to the bee. Plus, as an 8th grader, she's older and wiser than her peers.
3-Sean F Hadley-Number 212-Because he's the number closest to my favorite Rush song, 2112. This kid looks like a spelling machine, too. Laugh at the braces, bad skin, and glasses now, buddy, when this dude rides the 'bee to glory, you'll all be wishing you picked this grammatical giant.
