IT BEGINS: The official list of Semifinalists has been posted!
For the spellers (and for the serious Bee junkies out there), this is the longest mile of the Bee. The waiting. The stress that comes with moving from the ESPN 3 web cast today to the national TV screens via ESPN tomorrow.
There’s something magical and strange about the Bee. We take kids at their most vulnerable stage – that awkward lanky phase somewhere around puberty – and we put them on television and we watch them spell. Really, think about the oddity of it. Tiny humans stand up before an audience. And they spell words. They succeed. They fail. And, either way, we can’t stop watching.
I think our fascination is driven by the remarkable display of intelligence in a world that devalues intelligence. The show of hard work in a world that has come to value fame over actual achievement. I think it is the old-fashioned, elegance of brains over brawn. We like to spell along, we like to marvel at their genius, we like to picture who these brainiacs will grow to become. That’s why we like to watch.
Also, because sometimes kids faint while spelling.
More to come after I study the list of Semifinalist Spellers!
