A View From the Bee Monday, May 29, 2006 (14:00:31) Posted by Sherm by John Ciampa, Reporter from the Chelmsford Independent, May 4, 2006 I’ll be the first to admit to having reservations about taking part in the Chelmsford Schools Foundation's spelling bee Tuesday night. Three days before the event, I sat slack-jawed in bed, staring at the cover of the Scripps National Spelling Bee pamphlet, the "Paideia." You know its a bad omen when you can't even spell the name of the study guide you've been issued, not to mention being on a team that named itself the "White Outs." I guess you could say confidence was an issue. Click the Read More link for the full article! There was also a chance readers would confirm what they probably already suspect: The Independent staff really can't spell and that we're just a bunch of slaves to the automated spell-check icon that graces the taskbar at the top of our Word documents. But alas, my editor Kevin Zimmerman convinced me otherwise. The competition was for a good cause and would make for an enjoyable night away from our claustrophobic newsroom, not to mention the chance to watch the town manager and members of the Board of Selectmen squirm in their chairs when confronted with words that don't regularly crop-up in the mind-numbing blotter of their meetings. You know, words like process, procedure and committee. "Yes," I thought. This could be fun. That was until I found myself on stage seated next to Kevin and our trusty editorial assistant, Edna Arsenault. The first few words were painless enough. Words like gourmet and spangle seemed to flow effortlessly from our minds, lulling us into a comfort zone. Little did I know that was part of the plan. You see, Eric Andrus, who masterminded the event, figured he could boost team confidence by throwing out a few simple words to get each squad to believe in itself. Once we grew cocky, he'd catch us off guard. First came "laburnum," a word that nobody would ever have a use for outside of forestry class. Somehow we got it right, (Editor's note: We got it right, John, because in Richmond, Va., where I grew up there is a Laburnum Avenue) but much to Kevin's delight, our friends at the Sun didn’t. Soon after, two more teams in our opening round of five fell by the wayside. Then it was our turn to unravel. At some point, we started to get every word wrong. Fortunately, so did the other remaining team. I can't say that I remember what the words were. Nor am I concerned because I'll probably never write or speak any of them again anyway. Then came one I won't ever forget. The word was quartorzain, and even as I type it the red line that Microsoft Word uses to identify misspelled words forms below it. To complicate matters, the spelling bee's MC, television news personality Steve Cooper, had a nasty habit of mispronouncing some of the more complicated words during the competition - and quatorzain was no exception. "Quatorzain," he said bluntly. "Huh," I thought, the wheels in my head screeching to a halt. We asked him to repeat the word. Adjusting his lips, he tried again. "Quatorzain." Once again I questioned the phonetics. But having never heard of it myself, I acted against my better judgment and committed the sin of all spelling bee sins. I began formulating a guess. Cooper said the word's origin was French, and all I could think of was that seer Nostradamus who supposedly gazed into the future several hundred years back and wrote down his visions in riddles called quatrains. I looked at Kevin and Edna. "Quatrains," I said. "Like that guy Nostradamus." They stared back at me. We deferred to committee, but in the spirit of Chelmsford politics we probably should have deferred to subcommittee. Painstakingly, we compiled the best combination of consonants and vowels we could conjure within 30 seconds without sounding foolish. At this point, it wasn't getting the word right that mattered - it was about coming close enough to appear as if we almost knew what we were talking about. Under the circumstances, "quatraizain" was the best we could do. Were we playing billiards, it would've been a safety. By now, you probably realized what happened, though seeing the team we lost to finish second overall did provide us with a woefully misguided sense of pride. On a more positive note, the team with the fewest mistakes (Preserve Chelmsford's Future) ended up winning, both the town manager and selectmen held their own and we really did enjoy upstaging the competition. More importantly, 34 teams helped support Chelmsford schools and turned the spelling bee into a big enough success to guarantee a repeat next year. Now it's time to get back to studying that "Paidia." Oops. I mean, "Paideia." Content received from: CSF Member Portal, http://www.chelmsfordschoolsfoundation.org/member