McLEAN, Va. (AP) - The youngest person ever to qualify for the National Spelling Bee was running around in a stream with a friend, hunting for rocks. Suddenly, she came charging up the bank and headed straight for her mother. "Hold on to that basalt," Lori Anne Madison said in a bossy 6-year-old's voice, "and do not drop it." "Go away," her mother said playfully....She is blonde and adorable and talks at 100 mph. In the last few weeks, she has won major awards in both swimming and math, but one accomplishment above all has made her an overnight national celebrity: This week, the precocious girl from Lake Ridge, Va., will be onstage with youngsters more than twice her age and twice her size as one of 278 spellers who have qualified for the Scripps National Spelling Bee...Now there's another wrinkle: spelling bee fame. When Lori Anne spelled "vaquero" to win the regional bee in Prince William County in March, she set a new standard for youth in the national bee's 87-year-old history.
I'm jealous of very few people in life, but this little 6 year old know-it-all is one of them. When I was younger all I wanted to do was make it to the Scripps National Spelling Bee...Yep, young CW dreamed big.
Never happened though, I won my class, and grade a couple of times, but always fell short when it came to the full school bee. Just couldn't do it. Misspelled Artichoke once. Almost never forgave myself...Never forgave Artichokes, for that matter. Misspelled that word in the 5th grade, nearly 18 years later I've turned down, ate around, or flat out verbally assaulted every artichoke to come my way since. Never tasted one. That's how badly I wanted to make it to Scripps.
So congrats Lori Anne Madison, you're a better person than I am, and make sure you study the spelling of various foods that no one your age would have ever tried before too, because that's how they'll get you. They're not going to be asking you about basalt, or pneumonia or anything easy like that. If I had to guess they're going C-A-U-L-I-F-L-O-W-E-R. Cauliflower. Memorize it.
