Vibe Check: A Saturday Afternoon Spelling Bee
SLAH's Natalie Moore competes in Sip and Spell, a fundraiser for the C.A.R.E. Committee, at Kings Tavern.
This past Saturday, I strode into an already packed Kings Tavern, head held high, at 1pm. I’d gotten word that an adult spelling bee was on the afternoon’s agenda, and, as someone who reads and writes words professionally, I was more than a little confident.
“Do you just want raffle tickets, or are you spelling?” asked Jenna Morrow, a fourth grade special education teacher at Corinth Central School District and one of the event’s three organizers, when I walked up to the check-in table to pay the $10 registration fee.
“Oh, I’m spelling,” I replied.
“Would you like to buy a mulligan?” For an extra $10, you could buy a second chance to spell a word you messed up.
“I don’t need it,” I said cockily.
After splitting my raffle tickets between a few buckets for restaurant gift cards, I ordered a mimosa—the event was called Sip and Spell, after all.
Why, exactly, was there a spelling bee in the middle of the day at a dive-ish Saratoga bar? Well, to raise money for an organization that helps schoolchildren, of course. “I joined the C.A.R.E. Committee for a few reasons, but mainly because the work that they do is so impactful and important for the Corinth community,” Jenna says. (C.A.R.E. stands for Corinth Aims to Reach Everyone, and provides food and other necessities to Corinth students and their families through various programs.) “I knew I wanted to do a fundraising event for C.A.R.E. Kings used to do a spelling bee for fun, so when Jay Fitch, the owner, and I were talking about it, that’s what we landed on.”
At 2pm sharp, the bee began. “I know you guys are going to regret the day you gave me a Truly and a microphone,” Jenna said before calling up Joy, the first contestant. “I had to convince Joy to even do this, and now she has to go first. Joy, your word is ‘chicken.’” Joy got it right, as did most everyone in round one, which featured fourth-grade level words. “Why’d they have to say they’re fourth-grade level?” someone whined, clearly afraid of being tripped up by a word like “useful.” When it was my turn, I got the word “remind.” Child’s play.
Next up was my friend Max, who got “shoulder.” “I visualized it, I spelled it, I nailed it,” he said upon returning to our table. When it came to my friend Kate, who had been entered by Max against her will, she refused to get up, shaking her head in defiance. Just as I was trying to hype her up to head to the front of the room, another woman, presumably named Kate, stood up and approached the microphone. “You might’ve just dodged a bullet there, Kate,” Max said.
A couple people did get out early—someone spelled “beggar” with an -er, and another inexplicably forgot the “s” in “newscast.” The next round was sixth-grade level words, like “emergency” and “mechanic,” but things heated up after that. When someone got “separately,” a word that consistently appears with a red, squiggly line under it when I type it in Microsoft Word, I began to get nervous. When Max was presented with the word rhythmic, he didn’t skip a beat. “J-E-N-N-A,” he said into the mic, fully recognizing the limits of his spelling abilities.
After correctly spelling “meticulous,” a word I rarely use, let alone spell aloud, I met my downfall—a word that so perfectly described my inevitable crash and burn, it was almost poetic.
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