拼字比赛的阴霾

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On Wednesday, nearly 300 kids will take the

stage in the Maryland Ballroom to sweat it out at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Fewer will make it to the following day’s 2)semifinals, where one mistake means elimination. I’d 3)wager that many of them will be silently praying, “Not on the first word.” At least this was the plea—and later, the 4)lament—that hummed in my head at the very same bee, 17 years ago.

I was 14 years old, too anxious to be dazzled by the monuments and memorials of Washington. My mother and I had flown from Kentucky, but she was no stranger to the capital. My older sister had already competed three times at 5)nationals, having performed an 6)unprecedented three-peat at the state spelling bee in grades six, seven and eight.

When the time came, I 7)hurtled headlong into words. When my sister was 14 and I was 12, we trained together. We began with the Suggested List distributed at school—hundreds of words printed in 7-point font on a poster that folded up like a map. When the words along the 8)creases began to vanish,

周三，近300名孩子将在马里兰州

宴会厅举行的普斯全国拼字比赛中大展拳脚。少数参赛者将进入翌日的半决赛，只要一个失误就意味着被淘汰。我敢说，许多参赛者会默默祈祷：“千万不要在拼第一个单词时出错。”至少这是我17年前的祈求，而它最终演变成了哀叹。17年前，同样的拼字比赛上，这个祈求一直在我的脑海里嗡嗡作响。

那年我14岁，赛前的焦虑心情令我根本无心欣赏华盛顿各著名纪念碑和纪念馆。母亲和我从肯塔基州飞到这里，但她对首都却并不陌生。我的姐姐已经参加过三次全国拼字比赛，并在该比赛中取得了史无前例的三连冠佳绩，那是她上六、七、八年级的时候。

时间一到，我就一头扎进单词里。在姐姐14岁、我12岁的时候，我们在一起训练。我们从学校发的参考单词表开始——数百个单词用7号字体印在折叠起来的海报上，看着像一幅地图。当印在折痕上的单词被磨损得开始难以辨认

30)appoggiatura—that would never now prove useful. There went my 31)vaulting ambition, which didn’t know what it wanted and so flung itself everywhere: spelling bees, 32)tap dance contests, 33)thumb wars, whatever my sister was doing or had done. There went my mother, sighing somewhere in that pitying sea, gathering up her coat and purse. But I didn’t go to meet her just yet. I was 34)ushered offstage by an angel of a college student, 35)dewy and beautiful in her sympathy, telling me, in my brain-dead state, that we were going to the Comfort Room, a term with the 36)biblical weight of the Promised Land. I yielded to her like a lamb.

The Comfort Room was a room 37)cordoned off from parental or public interference. Inside, the most recent losers were sitting around a table abundant with junk food, in fairly credible 38)portrayals of calm and 39)normalcy. We 40)snacked on 41)Ho Hos and cheese sandwich 42)crackers. We casually mentioned the words that defeated us, a brief 43)bloodletting to initiate each new arrival, but then we dropped the subject of spelling altogether, as if we’d already moved on from missed words and lost opportunities, as if the specter of our common failure wouldn’t follow us forever. We were told we could stay as long as we wanted.

“花音”之类的词——所有这一切都烟消云散了。我的勃勃野心也付诸东流。曾经我并不知道自己想要什么，所以我的野心随处撒网：拼字比赛、踢踏舞比赛和拇指战，只要是我姐姐在做或做过的我都跃跃欲试。母亲也走了，她在遗憾海洋中的某处叹息着，收拾好她的大衣和钱包。但我没有立即去见她。我被一个天使般的大学生领下了台，纯洁美丽的她对我满怀怜悯。并且，她在我的大脑处于死亡状态的时候告诉我，我们将要去休息室，“休息室”是一个带着乐土意味的神圣重量的术语。我屈服得像只小羊羔一样。

休息室是一个谢绝父母或公众打扰的房间。在休息室里面，刚刚失手的比赛者们围坐在放满垃圾食物的桌子旁，他们看起来相当地平静和正常。我们吃奶油蛋糕和奶酪夹心饼干当点心。每个新来者到达休息室时，我们会随意地提起击败我们的那些单词，稍作自嘲自解，然后索性丢开拼字这个话题，仿佛我们已经从错过的单词和失去的机会中了走出来，仿佛我们共同的失败阴霾不会永远跟着我们。我们被告知，我们想在休息室呆多久都可以。

In the years since, I’ve watched spelling bees from the other side of the camera, and it’s always painful to see a speller fail. The first one out always prompts deafening applause; you can feel the sympathy gushing out of those parents. But we keep watching these young people with so much skill and innocence, who haven’t figured out how to be guarded on camera, who might possess five times the average kid’s vocabulary but lack the ability to hide their relief or joy or disappointment when directed to the 45)wings.

I take comfort in knowing what is found there—the crackers and 46)Sprite of the Comfort Room and, eventually, my mother. “Well,” she said, “I guess you won’t be doing this again.” I saw it then: the 47)tarnished silver lining. Next year I would be 15 and forever 48)ineligible.

以后的那些年，我通过摄像机的另一端观看拼字比赛，看到别人拼字失误时，总会感到痛心。第一个走出来的参赛者往往会引来震耳欲聋般的掌声；你可以感觉得到那些父母喷薄而出的同情。但我们总是观注那些年轻人，他们技艺过人、天真无邪，还不懂得如何避开摄像头的监控，有着相当于普通孩子5倍的词汇量却没能在被带到侧房时隐藏自己的解脱、喜悦或失望之情。

我欣慰于我在那里所找到的东西——休息室里的咸饼干和雪碧，还有我的母亲。“嗯，”她说，“我猜你以后不会再参加了吧。”然后我意识到：乌云背后的一线光芒已经失去了光泽。明年我就15岁了，再也没有资格参赛了。