That's right. I'm a 28 year old grown man and I entered a spelling bee. BUT - it was in a bar, and beer is pretty much all it takes to talk me into just about anything. But I digress.
My high school had an annual spelling bee, which I entered every year. Every year, I breezed through the preliminaries, made it to the finals, and....lost. Three years I was second place, one fluke year I actually finished third. Those words mock me to this very day. Freshman year - quirky (I spelled it querky). Sophomore year - plumose (I spelled it plumous). Junior year - jettison (I actually spelled it right on the paper I was holding, but when I started reading it I started with a g for some reason, and once you start you can't go back and start over...total BS). Senior year - augury (I spelled it ogrey). By my last year, the teachers proctoring the bee were calling me Hard Luck Auger.
So you can imagine my jubilation when I stopped in to get a beer at the bar a few weeks ago and saw the sign for the annual spelling bee. Well, the night came, and I rocked the house. My sister and her boyfriend gave me a good luck gift before heading to the bar, this necklace from Chili's made of miniature jalapeno peppers. The guys running the bee, upon my arrival on stage, asked me about it. From the back you could hear "Its because he's on fire!". My answer - "they are teeth from all the sharks I have killed...bathed in the blood of virgins..." Instant regret. Silence from the judges, then "...ooook, well lets get started before you get yourself into trouble here..."
So at that point my nickname became "En Fuego" every time they called me to the stage.
Then, I got the jackpot word. Jagermeister. It was a jackpot word because Allison (thefriendlyfashionista) and I had practiced it and had wondered whether they would give us all bar-related words, and if that one came up, if they would count the umlaut over the a. I believe when I spelled it, my exact response was "J-A-with an umlaut which I can also spell if you'd like, its the accent mark that's two little dots over the a-G-E-R...." and so on. In any case, I got that one right. The next time, they prefaced the word with "ok, if you spell this right you have to do it. The word is 'fella...' just kidding. somersault." So I spelled it then did a somersault on stage. Thinking back, its a miracle I didn't knock over the microphone, speakers, judge's table, and half the bar patrons, given my typical grace and poise (see the pole vaulting story), especially after a few beers. So then my nickname became Matt "somersault" Auger.
All the while, Shane is running up to the judges table with little "news announcements" for the judges to read periodically. Things like "this just in...Santa Claus is a confirmed pedophile in 4 states" or something. He also had a horse-drawing contest at the bar. My wife drew a nicely formed and proportioned horse. Shane drew a weird cartoon looking horse with a giant erection. The judges looked at it and next to my wife's, wrote "this one is perfect!" but next to Shane's erection-horse, wrote "but we like this one." We proceeded to have them post the drawings behind the bar.
Once the spelling bee was over and obligatory pictures of the champion (THIS GUY) were taken, Shane and I converged on the judge's table. All we saw - laptop with music, three microphones, and some monitors. KARAOKE TIME. For those who don't know, I am a karaoke junky. They didn't actually have any karaoke songs, so we just picked out songs we knew and sang over the music. No problem there. By the end of the night we had half the bar up there singing along, one guy was freestyling while another beatboxed. Hopefully in a few months we will be able to parlay that experience into a one night a week karaoke gig for them, which would be awesome. Details to follow on that.
Also, on Aug 22 Chacers is doing their "Run-the-rail-athon" - Twelve 12oz beers, one from each tap, with a lap around the block after each one. I'm going for the win.
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