So Much For Getting My Title Back

Just found out this week that all of the ESPN Zones are closing. Guess I won't have to be tortured until next year aching to get my Sports Spelling Bee title back. I'll now have to ache...until the end of time!!!!!

Or, I can get over it and focus on pursuits that actually mean something.

The Perfect Storm

There's a great old episode of The Honeymooners where Ralph Kramden is entered to compete on a Name That Tune-type game show and has to bone up on his music knowledge to prepare for the show. He enlists Ed Norton to come to the apartment and play sheet music on a piano, and Ralph practices being able to name the song, artist, writer, and composer. Ed, being a quirky character, has to play a little piece before every single song as a warm-up. Ralph gets annoyed quickly with this, but he's running through the songs with ease, and his confidence swells with every tune. Well, Ralph finally makes it to the show, smiling, cocky, rarin' to go, and then as the first song is played, you can see the blood rush away from his face as he recognizes the tune as that annoying little piece Ed had to play before every song. Ralph had failed to learn about that little piece because he completely overlooked it, focusing instead on the songs that were there on paper. It never occurred to him that the annoying little piece--which, BTW, was "Swannee River"--could possibly be one of the songs on the show. It's a wonderful lesson on confidence, overconfidence, preparation, and the pitfalls of assuming that you're totally ready for anything.

It's a lesson that I thought I had learned throughout my years, because I get the feeling that the ratio of times in my life that I felt that I was going into something ready to dominate and excel compared to the number of times that the event went all wrong and I looked like a damn fool is a very high ratio. There's going into a new grammar school thinking that I was going to be the cool dude because I was from a hardscrabble part of town and they were just a bunch of nerds; they turned out to be rich nerds who knew how to manipulate any situation so that I always seemed uncouth and beneath them. There's going to parties as a kid thinking I was going to dance and show off and be the man; but others were always much better at dancing and showing off, and I usually chose to be a wallflower and not risk embarrassment. There's going on various dates and social outings thinking that I was going to dazzle the women with my intelligence and charm; that almost never worked out for whatever reasons. (Maybe I'm not nearly as smart and charming as I think I am. Thank goodness my fiancee has been fooled into loving me anyway, or I might still be on Craigslist getting taken advantage of by fat sluts.) The point is, I feel that my life has been a series of lessons on not getting too confident about any upcoming event or contest no matter how good I feel about it.

Chalk up another painful lesson for me. Guess I still haven't learned.

I had been looking forward to the ESPN Zone Sports Spelling Bee literally from the moment that I won it last year. It was such an intoxicating feeling to walk into a competition that I felt like I had a right to be in--unlike, say, trying to pick up a hot chick at a bar or applying for a job that I'm not qualified for, which are events that are not very fun because of the underlying feeling of shooting for something that's out of my range--and actually winning the thing. I couldn't wait to come back this year and repeat the feat. When I e-mailed my registration, I wrote an extra little note at the end: "Make sure my trophy is nice and shiny." And I felt even better about my chances this year because there were several Chicago-area sports names that I would have been eliminated on if I got them last year, and I did some studying in an attempt to be prepared for them. I took the day off work this past Thursday because I didn't want to be tired after working all day and go to ESPN Zone and defend my title while trying to stay awake. I had taken some online tests last weekend to brush up on some of the popular hard-to-spell sports names nationally. I wound up typing "Krzyzewski" about ten times. So Thursday, I spent an hour or so researching the web sites of the Chicago Fire (soccer), the Chicago Sky (women's basketball), and the Chicago Blackhawks (hockey). I figured that I knew the names of all the Cubs, White Sox, Bears, and Bulls, because those teams compete in sports in which I play fantasy versions, and it's imperative that I know how to spell baseball, basketball, and football names so that I know who I'm drafting and acquiring in trades. So I wrote down names from the Blackhawks, Sky, and Fire that may trip me up because I was unfamiliar with them, and I stuffed the piece of paper into my pocket as I left for ESPN Zone supremely confident. It was names from those other fringe sports that would have knocked me out last year, and that's why I chose to study them this year. But apparently I didn't study them hard enough.

My friend "Drew" decided to attend the contest this year since he works downtown and it wouldn't be a big deal to check me out after work. He even texted me hard names as a way to quiz me, and I knew them all. Byfuglien. Hjalmarsson. Brouwer. Antti Niemi. Cuauhtemoc Blanco. You name it, if it was a Chicago sports star with a difficult name, I had studied it and felt that I knew it. When I arrived, I looked for him briefly, but he wasn't there yet. I then went to the sign-in table where a couple were just ahead of me receiving their placards. That meant that if I had arrived a minute earlier, I would have been ahead of them in order. (Remember that for later.) Drew arrived shortly after that. It was about 6:05. The lady at the table told me to come back to that same area just before 6:30 so that the director of the event could give us contestants the rules. I decided to sit with Drew up front in leather reclining chairs that he requested just so he could be in the front row for my coronation. He ordered food and I ordered a Coke from a comely black waitress. Drew and I shot the shit for about twenty minutes, then when the waitress asked if I wanted to order food, I made a show out of taking one last sip of Coke, grabbing my placard, saying, "Maybe later, I got some business to take care of," and running off as if I were O.J. sprinting for my plane. I got to the entrance area and saw the aforementioned couple and several male geeks standing around with placards around their necks looking for all the world like they were attending DragonCon. One guy was a brotha and was wearing a Blackhawks T-shirt with Jonathan Toews's name on the back, and I made a mental note to amuse myself if Toews's name came up in the competition. I actually heard one dude tell another dude, "He won it two years ago, and he won it last year," pointing at me. Obviously, the man who won in 2008 was here, but I didn't acknowledge being pointed at because I didn't want to seem too geeky. I just coolly stared at a TV screen pretending to watch something. We had been standing around for about ten minutes before the comely black waitress approached me from the left, tapped me softly on the elbow, flashed a billion-dollar smile and said, "Good luck." I thanked her and smiled back, then wondered how big of a tip she expected just because she pretended to care about how I did in this silly-ass competition.

Another ten minutes passed before Drew came back there wondering what was the hold-up, but at that same moment, the director walked through and I shooed Drew away thinking we were about to start. But it was yet another five minutes (and a walk-through the opposite direction by the director, who recognized me from last year and said "Welcome back") before he finally gathered all 16 of us competitors in a fire-escape hallway and ran down the rules. He had the 2008 winner and me raise our hands and take sparse applause for being past champs back for more. I had the most arrogant smirk on my face as he ran down the rules because I knew the rules and I was just waiting for the show to begin so that I could show off the skills that I had been harnessing for 365 days. It was a complete turnaround from last year, when I didn't know what I had gotten myself into and I just hoped before the contest started that I didn't embarrass myself by going out on the first name. I did a mock "Ooh" when the director told us that two extra prizes had been added for the grand prize winner, a year's supply of Powerade and a signed Luol Deng jersey. I wondered how I would cash in that many Powerade coupons at the store, especially since I don't have a car. The director finished his instructions and lined us up down in front, just like last year. I didn't even look at Drew presumably sitting in his seat right up front. I was the focused gladiator, ready for the war to commence, with no fear of losing. I even rubbed the trophy as I passed by before the contest began. I figured I was gaining a companion for the trophy from last year. I imagined them sitting side by side on top of my TV like twins. I had but one concern, and it was a bit irrational: I worried that I might go too fast on a name trying to show off, and I would put a letter accidentally in the wrong place. Never did I think they would give me a name that I didn't know.

The director told us right before the show began that there was a film crew there, which was not the case last year. They were from some local website, not a real news crew. We were told who the cameraman and interviewer were literally seconds after I saw them talking and noticed how incredibly ill-fitting the interviewer's dress was, way too tight for her age and too low-cut for her drooping breasts, and I wondered who the fuck they were. Then it was time to do it. As was the case last year, the guy who won in 2008 went first, because remember, the order was determined by who showed up first. The director told him that to make things a little more fair, he was to pick a number between 1 and 27, and the director would start reading names from that number so as to thwart any complaints about certain names being harder than others. This way, it was a totally random deal as to who got what name. The 2008 champ said, "It doesn't matter. We'll start with 1." My first name was Derrek Lee. I may have gotten him last year, too. I don't remember who my second name was. A blonde standing in front of me, half of the couple that arrived seconds before I did, asked me about the prizes that I received last year. I remembered standing behind a chatty blonde last year, too. I wondered if it was the same one. I was cool, calm, collected. Then the third round began.

This is a good spot to point out to those of you who aren't sports fans that the Chicago Blackhawks are smack dab in the middle of the Stanley Cup Finals, and the city has hockey fever like never before. In fact, the 2008 winner was decked in a Hawks jersey and cap, in addition to the black dude with the Toews shirt. So it should have come as no surprise that the list for the third round seemed to be all Blackhawks. Those hockey names are really good for spelling bees, you know. Our friend the 2008 winner was again given the choice of what number to pick so that the moderator could maybe start in a more random place. He again chose to start right at 1. It truly didn't matter to him. I don't remember if there were four or five people ahead of me at this point, but I do remember that all of the names in that round up to my turn were Blackhawks. Remember, I wrote down several of the more difficult Hawks names and glanced at the list on the train before I arrived. I looked at the Hawks roster online. Whether I spelled it right or wrong, if I received the name of a current Hawk, Sky or Fire, my eyes had seen the name earlier that very day. I recognized the name I got as another Blackhawk, but not as a difficult one that I had written down. The name was Brian Bickell. Now, I'm no hockey fan, despite the shaggy beard that I'm currently sporting in support of the Hawks' playoffs. (It's a tradition that teams in the hockey playoffs don't shave until they're eliminated or win the whole thing; certain loser fans with no lives, like me, chose to follow the tradition as if we're on the team.) So I didn't know who this Bickell guy was. And as a result, I had overlooked studying the one name that isn't difficult at all if you know the player, but it is difficult if you don't know him because there are several plausible spellings of Bickell. The first one that popped into my mind was Bickle, like Travis Bickle, the DeNiro character in Taxi Driver. So I start spelling the part of the name that I know is right, the B-I-C-K part. Then I pause, and my eyes widen as the realization washes over me that, uh oh, I actually don't know this guy's name and I'm gonna have to guess. I hate guessing in a spelling bee. What's the odds of being right on a guess in a spelling bee? The world stopped spinning as I pushed out the L-E from my voice box with a questionable inflection. The whistle blew. The yellow flag went up in the air. I had been eliminated. And my little insulated world imploded.

I never did look over at Drew.

I selected a cap from the collection of caps and T-shirts that were available as prizes for the also-rans after they got knocked out. Then, because to walk to my seat next to Drew would have been impossible thanks to the show going on right in the path that I would have to take, I stood in the back, lurking in the shadows as if waiting for another chance to enter, and I watched the rest of the competition. I swear before God, there wasn't a name that I heard that I didn't know and wouldn't have gotten correct, except for, of course, the name I got. Not in the entire fucking contest was there read another name that I didn't know. It didn't end much later after I lost because the list was so hard that people were getting eliminated very quickly. Maybe ten minutes after I got knocked out, some guy put an O in the name of Bears safety Al Afalava, the 2008 winner nailed Bears long snapper Patrick Mannelly, and the sordid affair was over. The shaking of the winner's hand by me had to endure a horrible five-minute interview of the new champ by the whore in the tight black dress. I nervously laughed as I shook his hand and said, "Those damn hockey names!" He laughed back and tossed me some kind of compliment. I didn't hear it because I was looking at this guy with his thick glasses and shaggy hair and slovenly clothes, who was entry #1 last year and this year because it meant so much to him to win this thing that he showed up twice before anyone else, and I was thinking, "My God. It's like I have a twin!" I then sat next to Drew, who just shook his head and smiled and asked, like a child whose hero had missed the game-winning shot and had let everyone down, "Brian Bickell?" The waitress came back and said, "I'm sorry. You better come back and win it next year!" I promised that I would and ordered dinner, then turned to my left to see the champ take the recliner next to me, trophy still shining in his hand. I mostly ignored him and watched the NBA Finals Game 1 with Drew. We left at halftime.

Since then, I've been reeling. I'm gonna say this big shpiel and then try to let it go. It was, by any rational observer's viewpoint, a perfect storm of coincidences and situations that led me to get this one name that I didn't know in a contest where EVERY OTHER FUCKING NAME was a name I knew. I left my house a little earlier than I did last year because last year, I was running in the door right at 6:30 and I almost missed the damn thing. Also, I took a different route that avoided all the traffic that slowed me down last year. That's why I was there at 6:05 and not at some other time. Any other time, I would not have been the #8 competitor. The route that I took had me going down the stairs to the subway, where I came across a friend from high school that I hadn't seen since 1995. The five minutes that we spent chatting and exchanging numbers may have caused me to miss an earlier train, which would have gotten me to ESPN Zone earlier than the two people who were registering right as I got there. If I had been really cool and not registered the moment I arrived, I would have gotten a different number. In the actual contest, if someone other than the 2008 winner would have been contestant #1, perhaps they choose a different word to start on than #1. If the guy has the slightest bit of creativity and chooses ANY OTHER NUMBER than #1, I don't get that name. If the list isn't created with that name in that position, I don't get that name. And, of course, if I don't overlook that name while studying, then I don't have a shitload of excuses to whine about.

I was fine in the direct aftermath of the spelling bee. Sitting there with Drew, eating and watching some hoops, ignoring the guy next to me who stole my title...I felt fine, no big deal. But as soon as I got ready to leave, it started to bother me. I received a certificate for a game card in addition to the cap. I gave the certificate to Drew. I looked at the cap and noticed that it had the apparel company's name across the front. The company was Champion. I figured that I used to be a champion, but today I wasn't. I left the cap. I also left the placard, which I kept last year. You know, when I won. No point in keeping it to commemorate this year. I got downstairs to take the subway home, and found myself standing against a big brick wall. I nearly turned around and banged my head off the wall. I was absolutely crushed. Who takes a day off and studies for a sports spelling bee and then LOSES on a name that he looked at and didn't bother to study? What kind of world-class loser does that? It could only be me, the one and only Planet Dre. This year of frustration and self-doubt and self-loathing that I'm about to go through before next year's contest, I wonder: Did the guy who won in 2008 and this year but lost to me last year go through this in the days and weeks and months after he lost? If so, then I guess the only solace I can take is that he stepped up and took his title back. He ignored anyone in his life trying to give him perspective, telling him not to worry about losing because you can't win 'em all and it's just a silly spelling bee, and he came back and took what he thought was rightfully his.

In 2011, once again it will be my turn. Toews, Byfuglien, Swannee River, and any other word they wanna throw at me. I will own them all. Unless I'm living in Memphis with my wife. As important as it is, it's not quite that important.

Local Boy Does Good

I have a strange combination of tunnel-vision desire to win anything I compete in and crippling fear of failure. So when I first heard about a sports spelling bee at ESPNZone this past Tuesday, I only had a couple of days to chicken out and decide not to go even though I officially registered for it by e-mail. The event was Thursday (last night), and I had to call my job several times to find someone with authority to give me the day off work, yet still I came close to not going. Wednesday night, I found myself contemplating how embarrassing it would be if I made the trek downtown and got all riled up only to get knocked out in the first round on some obscure hockey player's name. Then, in a flash, I got the inspiration to go to the Blackhawks web site and look at their roster, just to see if I could perhaps memorize the crazy surnames hockey players seem to possess. And with that, I decided that I was in. If I'm going through the trouble of doing even a little bit of studying for such a goofy event, then by God, I was going to take my shot.

I also have a tardiness problem, inherited from my dad. So I arrived at ESPNZone at 6:35P, five minutes later than I was requested. I rushed out of the train station and speed-walked two blocks to the place, and panting hard, I asked the young black girl at the front desk, "I'm embarrassed to say this, but I'm here for the Sports Spelling Bee?" "Why should you be embarrassed?" she said with a smile. "You might actually win the thing." How nice of her to not laugh in my face, as I'm sure she must have been tempted to do. She directed me to someone sitting at a desk upstairs, who gave me an entry sheet to fill out and told me to hurry into the pre-game briefing and bring her the sheet later. I stepped into a side room--coincidentally, a room where my friends and I sat and had dinner the last time I was at ESPNZone, about five years ago--and as I put on my participant's placard and sized up the competition, I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn't too late. The moderator for the event, a Bob Saget look-alike in a suit more expensive than my wardrobe, was giving the rundown of how a spelling bee works, and because I'm a veteran of spelling bees, I didn't think I missed anything pertinent, so that allowed me to catch my breath and relax. He said at one point that the names in the first few rounds would be rather easy and would be current Chicago sports names, so it would be a get-your-feet-wet situation. Some guy mistook that for getting a free pass in the first round, and we all had a chuckle at the idea. I figured the others competing would be nerdy white men, and I was right. There were fifteen of us, and one was a white woman, and two (including me) were brothas. Considering the prizes for the winner--a VIP party at ESPNZone, two White Sox tickets, and a trophy--I thought there may have been more, but there was no publicity for the event. I heard about it because I'm a member of a Facebook group for former National Spelling Bee participants, and the moderator of the group works for ESPN, so she posted a one-line blurb about it and put a link to the website.

I didn't have time to get nervous after the briefing, because Bob Saget led us to the front where the big-screen TVs show various sporting events in perpetuity and started the show. The sound for all the TVs was turned down, and Bob Saget let everyone know that he was aiming for us to be finished by the time the Magic-Cavaliers NBA playoff game started at 7:30P, to which I thought to myself, Man, he must have some hard names on his list if he plans to have us all eliminated in the next half-hour. He introduced the first contestant as last year's winner, and I started to get a little scared at the thought that hey, maybe there are some guys in this field that are even bigger sports geeks than me and will spell until midnight if they have to. We all stood in order of arrival against the wall and walked to the back of the line when we got a word right, so I, being #15, had to wait until everyone spelled one name before I had my crack. And when the first person got eliminated--he froze on the name Urlacher, which is dumb if you live in Chicago because he's a legend here--I thought, yes, I'm not the first guy out! The woman was about three people ahead of me, and I heard her chatting with someone else in line, telling him, "I'm gonna win." And believe it or not, that actually got me fired up. Not because it was a girl saying that, but because how dare anyone say that out loud. I took offense for some reason. I guess I figured that we're all here trying to win, so for her to verbalize her plan to win regardless of everyone else was more than a little arrogant, and besides, I'm the former Spelling Bee champ here, so if anyone has a right to victory, it's me! When Bob Saget asked me if I had a job that helped me in knowing all these names, I responded, "No, but I must admit. I am the 1990 Chicagoland Spelling Bee champion." I heard some cheers from the people for that, then I saw a yellow flag fly towards me. The judge, a curly-haired guy who couldn't have been older than 23, had "penalized" me for being a ringer, to which I replied, "You never said that professionals weren't allowed!" I was much more relaxed after that exchange.

I have to say, they pulled some fucked-up names not only from the Blackhawks but from the Chicago Fire soccer team that would have eliminated me had I gotten those names. But I didn't. And as the competition went along and people dropped off--the otha brotha, some prick from Milwaukee, some guy in a St. Louis Cardinals cap, the girl, a guy right in front of me with those paraplegic support stilts that attach to your wrists because his legs were all rubbery, and even last year's champ, who didn't know there were two Rs in Correll Buckhalter's first name--I started to have a little more fun with each turn. At one point I wrote out the name on my placard with my finger, like the little nerds do in the actual spelling bee because they're visualizing the word, and at a couple of other points when Bob Saget read off NBA names that had been retired several years ago like Dan Majerle or Detlef Schrempf, I gave him a raised eyebrow and said, "Are you serious?" That got a laugh out of the crowd. But the reality was, either you knew the names or you didn't, and fortunately I knew all of the names I got. However, I'm old, so I don't remember the name that I got right to win. I do remember my celebration when I won--an exaggerated fist pump and four thumps of the chest with both fists like I saw Rafer Alston do for the Magic a few nights ago. I proudly held my trophy up for the patrons to see, and they politely applauded for the geek with way too much glee for winning a sports spelling bee. Then I was interviewed by a reporter for a newspaper in Indiana, congratulated by some of the competitors who stuck around for the end, and asked to fill out some release forms by Bob Saget, who also took a bunch of pictures of me and the trophy. Then I shook his hand and went right back to the train station that I just ran out of a couple of hours ago, shaking my head at how eerily similar the experience was to my win in 1990. All the same emotions--pride, joy, shame at being so happy about something so utterly meaningless, and a little bit of bashfulness at my moment in the spotlight. And the same lasting emotion when all the others have cycled through--the thought that no matter what, I accomplished something, and no one can ever take it away.

The Champ Is HERE!!!

The Spelling Bee Champ is back! For one night only...Sports Spelling Bee, Thu. May 28, 6:30P, ESPNZone, downtown Chicago...I'm in it to win it!!

Blast From The Past II

In this blog entry about my experiences in the Chicagoland and National Spelling Bee, I typed the following sentence: "...while actually telling a girl that sat next to me during the contest how calm and cool I was, the gum I was chewing fell out of my mouth and onto the floor. Real smooth, Ex-Lax."

It's a small world after all...

Last Friday at about 6:45P, I was walking back into the building where I work with my dinner in tow. I had my headphones on and blasting as usual, so I kinda noticed a woman signing in at the front desk making a quick hand gesture, but I ignored it because I assumed she was talking to someone else. I then blew past three security guards trying to get my attention until I caught the last one out of the corner of my eye frantically waving his hands at me. He then pointed me back towards the woman at the front desk. I walked back and looked at the girl, and as she began to talk, my brain recognized her as someone from my childhood, but I couldn't immediately place her. She was tall, thin, black with light features, and had short wavy hair. "This is gonna sound strange," she started, "but did you participate in the Chicago Spelling Bee many years ago?" I cracked a large smile and looked in the air, shocked that a fellow contestant picked me out of thin air on the street twenty years later. But I actually didn't realize exactly who she was until we talked for a minute. There were only a couple of black girls in the Chicagoland Spelling Bee with me that year, and I didn't talk to any of them...except the one sitting next to me who confided in me that she was nervous. The one who I tried to calm down by telling her how cool and calm I was. The one who watched my Big Red gum go flying out of my mouth as I attempted to tell her how cool and calm I was. Yes, she was that girl. How crazy is that??

We shot the bull for a couple of minutes, as she recalled that she didn't know how to spell some word that I did, and she remembered the word that I got right to win it all. She asked what I was doing in that building at that moment, and I told her that I worked there for Chase. I asked what she was doing in the building, and she told me that she was an attorney for some firm there, and at that moment I started to go upstairs to my breakroom, because there's no sense continuing to talk to a girl who grew up to be an attorney while I'm counting checks for $10 an hour. "You can tell your friends about the weird girl with the long memory," she laughed as I walked away. I believe her name was Dana. I spent the rest of the evening not believing the coincidence that found me in 2009 walking past the girl who was so cute that I spit gum trying to have a conversation with her in 1990. In retrospect, perhaps I should be proud that this time, I didn't accidentally spray her in the face.

My History (6th In A Series)

This is the story of my journey to accomplishing what I like to call "My Greatest Achievement," winning the 1990 Chicagoland Spelling Bee. It shows how driven--and neurotic--I get when I am close to something that I want badly.

This all starts in 4th grade at Skinner Classical School, which at the time only went up to 6th grade. No one except 6th-graders and maybe a talented 5th-grader or two is supposed to hang around long enough to have a shot at winning the school spelling bee. But several 4th-graders, including yours truly and my friend "Jacob" and a couple others, wound up part of the last ten or so. We responded with typical 4th-grade maturity by stretching out across the front row of chairs, which were empty because we had outlasted most of the others, and pretending like we were bored to death when anyone but us was up at the mike trying to spell, and yes, this was in front of a full auditorium, and yes, our 4th-grade teacher ripped us a new one afterwards. Now, I want to say that I finished 3rd, outlasting my classmates, but I freely admit that my ego may be revising history and that I was not the last remaining "undergrad," but either way, I finished way higher than anyone imagined, and together we 4th-graders vowed to come back the next two years and TCB, since we knew we only had two more years left at Skinner. I don't even remember where I finished in 5th grade; I do know that the same uber-smart chick that won in my 4th-grade year won in my 5th-grade year. But she was a year ahead of me, meaning that for my last year at Skinner, she would be out of the way. I crammed and studied hard my 6th-grade year, and it came down to me and a classmate named Stephanie who was famous for having a fully-developed chest by, like, our 3rd-grade year. (I can still see her doing shuttle runs for gym class now. All of the guys would line up on the side as if we were watching a parade.) Anyhow, I misspelled "nicotine," adding an extra "c," and she got it right and nailed the next word to win it all. Displaying my passive-aggressiveness at an early age, I graciously shook her hand and congratulated her, then later accused her of stealing my study guide and replacing it with one that had "niccotine" in it. The way the process works is that the winner of the school contest competes against the 20 or so other schools in the district, and the winner of the district title takes on the 20 or so other district winners for the citywide title. Then the city champ competes in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee, which gets a lot of pub these days, what with the ESPN telecasts and the movie "Spellbound." Well, being Stephanie's runner-up meant that if something should happen to her and she couldn't compete in the district contest, I would take her spot. Wouldn't you know, several weeks before the district contest she BREAKS HER LEG. So, combine my last year at Skinner with what I thought was my destiny to be the top speller there with the district contest that year, 1988, being held at Skinner (think conference title game at your home stadium in your senior year), and I thought Stephanie breaking her leg was a sign that I was meant to compete in the district spelling bee and have a shot at city. Nope, think again. Stephanie showed up the day of the district on crutches and destroyed my hopes and dreams. She finished second. Was I a little bitter? I complained to a complete stranger in the audience that she was taking my spot and I hoped she lost. Of course I felt like a complete dick once she did finally lose, but dammit, I wanted that spot so bad.

So my next two years of grade school were at Ogden Elementary, home of a gifted program called International Baccalaureate, and because I didn't do well in subjects that bored me, which at the time was anything that didn't have to do with sports, pro wrestling, or pussy, my grades were absolutely atrocious. I had no luck with women, I had my folks on my back all the time about my grades, and I was separated from the amigos that I grew up with at Skinner. So I basically had nothing going for me except my reputation as "Dr. Pervert" because of the naughty stories I wrote, and the spelling. It was a new district, new school, but I was the same driven son-of-a-gun as far as wanting that school spelling title. Well, I got more than I thought. The way that the school spelling bee was done at Ogden was in written form by the English teacher, Mrs. Smeriglio. It wasn't a big auditorium with the whole school watching, it was a classroom with about 50 kids in it, mostly 7th and 8th-graders from the gifted program with a few 6th-graders sprinkled in. Smeriglio read off fifty words, and we wrote them on a piece of paper and handed it in. So my first school title was rather anticlimactic. I was standing in line the next day and Smeriglio walked up to me and calmly said, "Congratulations Andre. You're number one." It was a perfect conquering--I got all fiddy words right, but the best anyone else could do was 49. A thin blonde named Sara Nicholson and a thin black girl named Jamila Carrington had overheard me talking shit before about how no one was going to have a chance to beat me in the spelling bee, and they gave me shit back, so I was extra proud because it was a victory for the ugly, fat kid over the rich, beautiful people. I believe Jamila got the 49, making her my alternate. Haha. But I wasn't done. Ogden brought in a specialist to actually pull me out of some classes and study for the district contest, as if my grades didn't suck enough. But it paid off. I walked into the school library at a grade school whose name escapes me, and whooped the little children who dared challenge me for the district championship. I even graciously shook hands with the chubby but hot black girl who finished second to me, kinda as a last little "Who's da man??" to Stephanie, Sara, Jamila, and anyone else I didn't like. The district contest was eventful because the principal, Mrs. Vandevier, gave this broke nigga $10, a lot of money at the time, to take a cab there instead of getting on a school bus. I was moving on up, baby. Finally I was able to get some respect from the people at Ogden; Vandevier treated me to a turkey-and-avocado sandwich at some highfalutin place and said, "Way to go, kid." But because success came so easily compared to my struggles at Skinner, I went to the city spelling bee at Tribune Tower a little starstruck and over my head. Despite that, I finished fourth and won a dictionary and thesarus set that I still have to this day.

Fast forward to next spring, my last year of eligibility to win the citywide spelling bee and compete in the National Spelling Bee, and my journal entry from early 1990.

Fri. Feb. 9--[Smeriglio] announced that Feb. 20 will be the school spelling contest, and Sara's issuing the challenge again. But she's not gonna win. She's gotta keep her cover girl image. While I'm studying, she's out buying clothes. While I'm cramming, she's on the phone. While I'm shaking hands as Arsenio's next guest, she's watching the tube wishing it was her. I told her one of my longtime secrets: It's not how much you study for it, it's how bad you want it. And this year, I want it bad.

See, I was thinking that if a little black boy from the West Side of Chicago could win the National Spelling Bee, then all sorts of fame would follow--Arsenio, maybe the Tonight Show, Nightline...so yeah, my head was a little big back then. Sara got 48 right this time for the school spelling bee. Unfortunately for her, I got 49 (I put an "e" instead of an "i" at the beginning of "ingrained," so the correct spelling has forever been ingrained into my brain). Jamila was an also-ran. To better prepare the winner for the rigors of district and city, Smeriglio made the first part oral, in that same cramped classroom, and when it came down to the final three (me, Sara, and some 6th-grade Latina) then we took the 50-word written exam for all the marbles. And I pulled it out again. Vandevier announced my win over the loudspeaker the next day, so the school support was starting to build, and with it my personal pride and confidence. The District 3 contest was two weeks later, and the night before, as a way to calm my nerves, I made a mix tape that I still have, and I also read the spelling bee words out loud onto a tape so that I could play a word, pause the tape, spell the word, start the tape, and spell another word. (I would do that before the city contest as well, which obviously means that I won the district.) At Lincoln Park High School for district, they put us in the Activity Hall, but it was only half-full with the contestants, their parents, and the judges, so where it may have been intimidating for some kids, it was no sweat for the defending district champ because I had been in a full auditorium on stage with nothing but a mike stand masking my fear, and that was just for the school title at Skinner. (In a twist, one of the district contestants, another chubby hot black girl named Dana, went to high school with me. We never hooked up, though; she was South-Side bougie.) Vandevier had suspended me two months earlier for telling a girl she had a nice ass, so it was interesting to see her slurp up to me after my win. But I understood why--I had a legit shot at being Windy City champion, and she knew that if she wanted her school represented respectfully, she was going to have to treat me with some respect.

All stops were pulled out for the Chicagoland Spelling Bee. My aunt's husband bought me an Adidas jumpsuit valued at $80, and I didn't wear it until the day of the spelling bee. I studied every night after school, even on nights when I would get home late because I was practicing for a school production of "Annie Get Your Gun." I would play my tape of all 500 words in the study guide, sometimes I'd miss 5, sometimes I'd miss 7, and every time I'd get more and more determined to conquer these words. Kids would come up to me asking when the spelling bee was and wishing me luck, kids whose parents lived in the same condo complex as Oprah, so they had no reason to ever speak to someone like me. I will never forget how I felt that morning leading up to the contest. I was arrogant, supremely confident, like Ali, "dangerous, pretty, and can't possibly be beat." From my journal:

Thu. Apr. 12--It hasn't sunk in yet. The shock of becoming Windy City spelling champion hasn't whipped me in the back of the head at the time, but it will. Alright, I'll tell you highlights. My dad picked me up about ten minutes before it started and said a prayer, which possibly helped. Then we went...[My runner-up, Renato] Diaz was shooting down words like an attack plane at its prey. But he choked on "apartheid." Now, I know that word wasn't in the list I had to study, but there was a period of one hour where two people were eliminated, so basically we used up all of the list words. Then they went to some words I had never heard of before, including one that both Diaz and I missed. I spelled "meringue" after Diaz missed [apartheid]...I was on the news all day, and I got phone calls. [Jacob] couldn't believe it, and they exploded back at the school.

Some other memories: That prayer that my dad and I had before the event involved acknowledging my mom for reading with me early in my life, and that was the first time I ever thought about how much she did for me before she died. I haven't forgotten since, though. My dad told me later that he saw the confidence I had at that point and that's when he knew that I was going to win. They take these mug shots of every contestant as they enter the hall at Tribune Tower, and mine has this half-smirk on it like I'm the coolest motherfucker in the world, and that's the pic that they used in the booklet that shows all 226 contestants in the National Spelling Bee. Of course, Mr. Cool had a couple of fuck-ups, and one almost cost me the title: First, while actually telling a girl that sat next to me during the contest how calm and cool I was, the gum I was chewing fell out of my mouth and onto the floor. Real smooth, Ex-Lax. Second, I was so intently playing songs by Prince in my head trying to relax during the contest that I completely forgot that my spelling coach had warned me to look out for the word "torus," because it can be pronounced like "taurus," and can therefore trip me up. I got the word, I spelled it like the bull, and when they rang the bell to signal a missed word, I stood there in shock wondering how they could say I spelled "taurus" wrong. The judges actually had to rewind the tape of how they pronounced "torus" in order to determine that they indeed had pronounced it like the bull and therefore could not penalize me for spelling a word that sounded exactly like the word they intended for me to spell. Whew. I wasn't playing Prince in my head anymore after that. I was totally locked in from that moment on. When I nailed the final word, and the judges said that it was correct, I turned and did this little reverse fist-pump thing inspired by one of my favorite pro wrestlers, Curt Hennig, while keeping the same stoic, almost bored look on my face that I've had ever since. And that was the clip that the news stations kept playing, so for a couple of months people were coming up to me saying, "You're that spelling bee guy!" and then doing the reverse fist-pump and telling me how cute they thought that was. I didn't plan it, though; it was a totally spontaneous move. My next action afterwards, to prove how un-smooth I was, was to stick my hands in the jacket pockets of my Adidas jumpsuit and stand there waiting for someone to give me a trophy or something. (There was no trophy. There was an Apple computer that they delivered to my house a couple of months later, but it stopped working before I started high school in September.)

The next week was a lot of fun. I stood in a classroom of kindergarteners and fielded words from them and spelled them correctly, much to their awe and admiration (except for some made-up word out of "Ghostbusters II" that I had never heard of). I did that for a room of 2nd and 3rd-graders as well. The manager of the Tribune sent me two front-row tickets right behind the dugout to a Cubs game. (The treatment that I got from the staff at Wrigley Field, as if I had no right to be there, is part of the reason why I hate the Cubs.) I went to see the superintendent of police, LeRoy Martin, and he took some pictures with me and my dad and gave me a jacket and hat, which my dad promptly took so that he could try to claim he was part of the police so that he could get free stuff and park anywhere he wanted. Yep, that's my dad. The American Legion presented me with a spelling bee poster and $25, and news cameras were there for that too, as was the Chicago Defender for pics. My dad dragged me into my alderman's offices looking for more praise, but he barely had time to shake my hand. Then that weekend, Saturday, April 21, I spoke at Operation PUSH next to Rev. Jesse Jackson. I still have a picture of that, and my aunt has an audio tape of the speech I gave, but it was not very long because the night before I was at my uncle's house watching old wrestling tapes and playing Nintendo and I didn't write a speech as I had intended to. I mentioned my mom, though, and when my grandmother heard it live over the radio, I'm told that she was very emotional. My church threw me a bon-voyage party the Sunday before I left for Washington and raised over $100 for me in fun money. I spoke at a teachers' appreciation function at Dunbar High School, and an Ogden teacher wrote a speech for me that was so good that I got a standing ovation. That summer I went back to Skinner unannounced and got a hero's welcome. They gave me a long computer printout congratulating me that they said they had hanging on the wall after I won. So for a while there, I was hot shit.

A now-funny aside is that on Friday, May 11, about two weeks before the National Spelling Bee, I swung so hard at a pitch in softball (missed everything, too) that I yanked the ball of my hip against the socket and suffered a hairline fracture. Yes, after all the bitching about Stephanie at Skinner taking her spot in the district championship despite the broken leg, I was now in jeopardy of giving up my spot to injury. But I really had no intention of missing it, even though I was hobbling around school on crutches for the next week. I even went to a wrestling match two days later, and bowled a week after that. What I didn't do during all of this hoopla is study. See, I knew that winning the whole shebang was beyond my reach, since they use any word in the entire unabridged dictionary and there's no way I can study for that. And since this was my last year of eligibility, since I knew I was never going back again, I wasn't interested in creating stress for myself and ruining the trip. I didn't do a lick of studying. My coach had some sheets of words from previous national contests, but my attitude was, either I already know the words or I don't. I simply did not want to pump myself up for competing in this thing only to feel deflated when I didn't win. My folks gave me some crap for not studying, but I think they knew why, so they weren't too hard on me.

I wanted to take my uncle and aunt as my two adult chaperones to the National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC, but the people in charge at Tribune Tower signed up my dad as official chaperone since he did accompany me to the Chicagoland Spelling Bee, and he still intimidated me (and beat me), so I didn't want to tell them to leave him off right in front of his face. That left only one spot, which I gave to my aunt since she was on my ass about schoolwork all the time and therefore deserved it more than my uncle. A "fan" left a new bag, deodorant, and other toiletries at the school, but I was trying to shove too much shit into it before we left for Midway Airport and I broke the zipper. Nice way to start the journey. My aunt and I were almost late for the May 27 flight, but we made it. It was my first time flying since I was 2, and they have pictures of me at the airport crying on my mother's lap as proof because I sure the heck don't remember. The return flight was the last time I had flown before "Torrie" and I lit up Minneapolis last New Year's. My dad took his ticket and exchanged it for a flight the next day because he had something to do the day of the flight, and he also left a day early, so on those two nights I had our room at the Capital Hilton all to myself. The nights that he was there, I slept in my aunt's room on her couch because there was no couch in my room, meaning I would have had to share the bed with my dad. Not happening. I did make sure to enjoy myself, going to an ice cream social even though I didn't (and still don't) know how to socialize, going to Virginia to look at some landmarks and play volleyball and eat barbecue, visiting the National Aquarium and Ft. McHenry, and doing an interview with a Tribune reporter the night before the contest began.

Then came the morning of the contest. I'm not nervous, I'm feeling good, I'm gonna just go out and perform, whatever happens happens, right? So I go to the bathroom and get ready to shower, and I look in the mirror. I've got 21 million little bumps all over my face. I have never seen anything like that on my face since that day, and I never saw anything like it before. My aunt's theory wasn't nerves but rather a possible allergic reaction to the spare pillow and/or blanket I used when I slept on the couch. But I know it was nerves. I had been so cool, so calm, so collected. But underneath, I was a wreck, and I didn't even know it. The reason I know it was nerves is because when I did get eliminated on my fifth word, "somizdot" (I put an "a" in place of the first "o," and yes, I am proud that I came that close to nailing a word I never heard of), I almost completely broke down, but how could I feel like that about a contest that I didn't study for? Unless...unless...I wanted that national title more than I wanted to admit. Arsenio, Nightline, and all that. I really don't regret not cramming for the contest because it would have drained me, and I still couldn't have won. Then again, one of the hardest words in the contest, so hard they put it in one of the last rounds, was "baccalaureate," and if you read the beginning of this post, you know why I would have gotten that one. So with some studying, who knows? I got the first 3 words right, but they were all from that original 500-word guide that was used for the Chicagoland Spelling Bee. Those first 3 rounds took so long because of the 226-person field that it took all day Wednesday to get through. So I made it to day 2 without exploding, then guessed my 4th word correctly before bowing out in the 5th. The girl who won appeared on "Today" the next morning. I couldn't stand to watch.

I wanted to make something special out of the week, like at least losing my virginity to a stranger that I would never have to see again, so Friday night after the banquet two fellow contestants and I actually went to the shop downstairs from the hotel and purchased a three-pack of rubbers. And because my dad left early, I had my room all to myself, and at one point there were us three guys and three girls from the contest in the room together. But we were nerdy 13 and 14-year-olds after all, so we all chickened out on making a move, then the loud music and dancing around caused the patrons below us to call downstairs and complain, resulting in my aunt coming to the room and clearing it out. We left the next day. There was a surprise party waiting for me when I got home. That's the last time anyone's thrown a party for me. But it was a great experience for me, my little fifteen minutes. I got a plaque and trophy at 8th-grade graduation a week later, and another standing ovation. I got a series of letters from a lady in Skokie who was very supportive and touched by my story. And I got 65th out of 226 in the National Spelling Bee. That's #6 in your program, but #1 in your hearts, for those of you who want proof. I also got a glimpse of what I'm like when I am around something that I really, really want: Calm and collected on the outside, completely ripped apart on the inside. I can't begin to imagine what I'm going to be like before I propose marriage to someone...the morning of my wedding...before the birth of my first child. It's difficult for those who don't know me to understand why I seem to clam up during any social situation involving women. But hopefully this will help explain why the more I care about something and want it, the quieter and more nervous I get. I just don't want to get close and do something stupid to fuck it up. It's easy for others to say, "Hey, loosen up, it's okay." They don't have a history of screwing everything up that they touch. And except for that city spelling title, I have absolutely screwed everything up.