In honor of the National Spelling Bee (which I love), a list of all the words I remember misspelling in various spelling bees. 1st through 2nd grade were in front of the school.

• 1st grade: tortoise (One of the Hunter twins beat Elizabeth and me because of this word; I feel like it was Justin)
• 2nd grade: radish (spelled with two d's)
• 5th grade: mayonnaise (during the school spelling bee and spelled with 2 s's instead of n's, but the other girl misspelled a word, too, so I actually ended up winning with the super simple meteorologist to go on to the district)
• 5th grade: dumbbell (in the District Spelling Bee; left out a b; I felt really stupid, especially since I had just struggled to figure out barleycorns which of course is very easy, but I had no clue what it was since the definition was a measure of weight; also it was the same day in February when I had to present my Independent Study Project on Anorexia, so I had been up until 2 something the night before making my poster look better by putting pictures of people like Karen Carpenter and was so tired)

Middle-school spelling bees were lame because I was in the magnet program TLC, so we always went off the official list since the TLC English classes could spell well, and so then I would find out later that the school winner spelled giraffe or something equally idiotic and would be upset because I never won in my class.

• 6th grade: preferential (spelled with two r's)
• 7th grade: vaudevillian (spelled without the e)
• 8th grade: pterodactyl (stupidly replaced the o with an a)

The summer before 12th grade at Governor's School at College of Charleston (Spelling Bee was for "Nerd Week", and even though I wasn't on a team, one team let me join just so I could participate and spell)

• bourgeois (I think I was trying to spell bourgeoisie instead or got confused or something because I seem to remember putting a letter after the s.)
• boutonniere (Basically everyone got out on this word until one Asian kid finally got it; I spelled it with two t's and left out an n; I don't remember if I correctly spelled the end part)