A CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED HOPE: Note: I wrote this on my flight tonight to DC. Thanks to a crazy day at my other, non-corporate gig, it's getting posted now. I'll have more thoughts on the Bee shortly, now that I'm at my other home in DC.
I'm writing this at 37,000 feet. It's a bumpy ride from Denver to Baltimore, and it's one of the few chances I've had this week to take some time, think, and write.
Heather and I have been asked to talk about our personal experiences at the Bee. I think many of you have read my account from last year about how I became a speller. For those of you who haven't, you can read it earlier in the blog.
The Bee back then, in 1991, wasn't the spectacular festival that you see now, but the seeds for that were in motion. We had a total of around 230 spellers (I was wrong in my memory), and the publicity was limited to newspapers, cable news networks, and, for the winner, the late night shows and the morning shows the morning after winning.
That's not to say that it wasn't as fiercely competitive. It was. You had competitors who had been to the Bee three, four, five times, you had professional coaches, you had stage parents.
The competition, however, was shorter, and more unforgiving -- to borrow a collegiate sports analogy, less college basketball, more college football. It was two days of spelling on a stage -- no more, no less. Silence meant victory, and the bell tolled for those who were vanquished.
I don't recall a written test, or a bonus round. What I recall is that I took the stage the morning of Day 1 thinking, 'well, I've come this far...', feeling breezily confident the first three rounds...and then...
And then, came Round 4, which turned into the spelling equivalent of one of those World War One battles where you go to the microphone not knowing if you're going to have a seat on stage when you're done.
Once *that* was done, we broke for the day. That night, my anticipation was *intense*. I've mentioned before that I'm a very competitive man; I'm not a sore loser, but losing tears me up. It's why I joined the military, why I went into politics, and why I worked for one of the most competitive technology companies in the world; I want to *win*, and if I don't, I at least want to know that I left everything on the field, and gave it my best shot.
I've said earlier that, like one of this year's spellers, I didn't agonize over the Bee. I didn't go so far as he did -- I did study every night, after all.
That night, though, I chose not to study. I looked at the stage after Day 1, and I realized, 'Holy crap, I can *win* this...I can be the national champion!'. I chose, that night, not to study. I earned my rest.
I didn't win the championship the next day. It turns out I won something far greater: the knowledge that, no matter the odds, I had a shot. In the unlikely story that is my life (and it *is* an unlikely story), the only thing that had rung false for a kid who was largely raised by a single mother (my 'dad' is actually my stepfather) is a sense of hope that things would turn out okay.
I haven't lacked it since.
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