SQUUSH: Our first guest post of Bee Week!
Hi! My name is Amber Born. I competed four times in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, though if you’ve heard of me, you may know me from my fourth attempt in 2013, when I placed 4th (I was the one who said “She seems nice,” which I’m now regretting not copyrighting).
I belong to The Order of the Squushy Carrots, which is a secret speller organization. It’s so secret, there’s an Associated Press article about it that’s on the ABC News website and a bunch of other places. However, I don’t know how long I can remain in the Order, because my hair has been getting parrot-like lately, and the theme song says “At least we don’t have hair like a parrot,” and I don’t want to be in violation of the rules. The other two rules, as stated in the theme song, are that every day we walk the Earth forever alone, and no one in the Order plays the sousaphone. Also you have to prefer your carrots squushy, not crunchy or squishy, but that’s a given. The other secret speller organization to which I belong is the Ghettopens, which is among the world’s most awesome and geeky puns. It’s from the winning word of the 2012 Bee, “guetapens.”
My point in telling everyone this is partly to increase the fame of the Order and Ghettopens, but mostly because I think a lot of people are under the impression that the Bee is kind of a cutthroat endeavor full of nerds who have no friends and spell all the time, even when they’re in National Harbor for the actual Bee. Basically, we’re normal people, except for our taste in carrots and the geekiness of our puns. We’re so normal that we can use words like “geekiness,” even if they aren’t in Webster’s Third, the only decent dictionary, as far as the Bee is concerned. At least I think we can. Hopefully the speller mafia won’t come for me*.
*There isn’t an actual speller mafia, as far as I know.
