The Churchville School Spelling Bee Continued... The kids in the audience, bored out of their skulls after the first two minutes, would become increasingly hostile, to the point of wishing death on every kid who spelled a word correctly. And what was it all for? The dubious honor of being known by one's fellow students as an infallible source of grammatical wisdom to be consulted whenever needed. (The winner's popularity seemed to peak during spelling tests.) To our simple minds, though, the Spelling Bee was a chance at glory. We'd be the envy of our peers. The stage, the spotlight, the cheering crowd--that was all we saw. This was our ticket to fame. And back in 1975, before I had discovered the joys of cynicism, I was gullible enough to buy into all this. The pain came later. In the days leading up to the big event, Mrs. Payne held more in-class spelling bees to select the other four contestants. Each one found the class buzzing with excitement. I stood nervously against the blackboard with my classmates, dredging the recesses of my mind for the correct spellings of complex words like "balloon" and "elephant," fighting passionately to stay in the fray. But each time I would be knocked out by some tricky exception to the "i before e" rule and I'd have to take my seat with all the losers who hadn't even gotten past the first word. I found myself getting more and more discouraged. After my third loss I no longer even cared. This apathy reached its peak when Donna Incolingo, a giggly girl known neither for her wit nor her spelling savvy, somehow managed win a round. I was appalled. In horror I watched as some of the class's best students, myself included, were floored by sneaky silent "t"s, or "gh"s that sounded like "f"s, while Donna managed to end up with words like "goat" and "clown." Had I known about such things as "fixed" contests I would have guessed that Donna's parents had had a hand in this obscene travesty. ("Make her look good," Mr. Incolingo had winked as he slipped a twenty into Mrs. Payne's eager hand.) Her win not only flabbergasted me but plunged my spirits even lower into the quagmire of ennui. I was stupider than Donna Incolingo? I had dropped so low that a witless future cheerleader could run circles around me? It was in this state of misery that I entered the fifth and final round of competition. So glum was I that I hardly even noticed my classmates dropping like flies all around me. So imagine my astonishment when I snapped out of my depression and discovered that I was one of only four kids still standing. Minutes later, our number had dropped to three. Then it was just me and Kevin Brockway. And before I knew what was going on, Mrs. Payne was strolling over to me with a big grin on her face. I had won the final contest! I was back in action! I hadn't even been trying. My last-minute victory made me the long shot of the five, especially in light of my dismal performance in the first four rounds. Mrs. Payne handed us a list of potential Spelling Bee words and instructed us to devote our evening hours to memorizing it. There was something in her tone that made it clear she was not kidding. The reason behind this soon became apparent. It seemed that ever since Mrs. Payne had started teaching at our school, the winner of the hallowed Spelling Bee had always hailed from her class. She told us this quite casually, as if it had just occurred to her, but the implications were clear--either win or find yourself scrubbing blackboards for the rest of the year. Finally, the big day arrived, and all 25 of us--five from each class--were ushered onto the dark stage. On the other side of the curtain the auditorium was filling with hundreds of snickering kids. The event always drew a capacity crowd. But since the entire school was forced to attend, this was not surprising. After about 10 minutes, the curtains opened and we were paraded across the stage, like a flock of obedient ducks, to a thunderous roar of applause. None of the applauders knew yet what tedium awaited them. Keep reading?