The time is here.  The most anticipated sporting event since Women’s Football has reached the Finals.  It’s The 2009 National Spelling Bee.  Winner takes all.  Blood, sweat, and tears will be left center stage. 

This is a sport that no grown-up dares to enter – well that and the fact that it’s exclusively for children in Pre-K to Eighth grade.  But if they did they would be butchered.  In 2006 a kid took a terrible spill on the stage.  A word came at him and knocked him off his feet.  You can’t get this kind of action in other sports. 

Other pro-athletes dream of spelling words correctly let alone speaking coherent.  So these pro-spellers offer their help to the less fortunate.  Former Vice President Dan Quayle has been taking lessons hoping to one day learn how to spell potato.  “Is it an e or no e?  I give up!”

Before the Finals we got a chance to peek into the locker room.  A kid hung his head over the toilet in agony.  A tiny little kid in the corner banged on the lockers and screamed, “K-I-L-L, K-I-L-L, K-I-L-L.”  Others came with their A game and didn’t let this kid get into their head.  Refusing to let anything stand in there way.  “Stay out of my way,” a kid yelled at a trash can.  Index cards flew through the locker room; an older kid that appeared to be college bound and sporting a small moustache sat, stood and walked to a makeshift podium, practicing how he planned to wow the crowd.    

Only one will be victorious, the other a sore loser.  Now go cry to your momma and shut up!