Failure: An Option

When I was in elementary school- Lenape, 5 grade- we had a grade-wide optional spelling bee. It was  volunteer-only due to the fact that it revolved around getting up and speaking in front of the rest of the grade. As I recall, roughly thirty kids signed up, meaning that they would be "performing" in front of about seventy kids.

I was actually pretty excited to participate. I was a very self-conscious child, to the point where I was actually a bit self-centered in most social situations. I thought that I could impress my peers with my assuredly daunting spelling skills. In reality, I was not a fantastic speller, and I had never been. In first grade, I had a sheet with a handful of words I used a lot and had trouble spelling to help me write in class. Words like "shadow" and "dragon" made appearances on the list, among many others.

During the spelling bee itself, I actually did very well. It started with simple words-three to five letters long- that were easy to spell. As the bee started, I started getting nervous. Speaking in front of about seventy people, even in such a friendly setting, was not an easy thing for me to do. But as the bee went on, I began to regain my former confidence. I made it past round after round, managing to either luck out and receive very easy words or blindly guessing my way through them. I made it into the top ten, and that was when I started getting overconfident.

After three more kids got eliminated, I got the word "lightning." I thought I had it. Gosh darnit, I knew I had it! With the confidence of the most swelled puffer fish, I began "Lightning, L-I-T-E-N-I-N-G, lightning." And then I froze. I fudged it. I fudged it and basically a thousand people saw. It felt like the blood rushed out and into my head, all at once. I would have rued my hubris, had I known tat I possessed it. I had to make the walk out of the lineup and into the crowd, head hung, assuming that every single person in the room was watching me. Again, I placed my own value on the pillar raised through others eyes. The spelling be was just another night with ninjas, a small thread in the tapestry of my self-image, hung from the rafters in an attempt to shut out the light of my own ideals.


Spelling Bees