J-E-A-L-O-U-S

Thursday night was a huge night in sports. Cavs-Magic Game 5 with Lebron's playoff life at stake, you say? Hahahaha, how wrong you are! It's the annual gathering of America's smartest Asians and Indians who will never get laid: the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee! 

Allow me to set the scene: Tom Bergeron, who I'm pretty sure wouldn't turn down a roll in the next Air Bud movie, is your humble host. Sidharth and Kavya, the "favorites," are predictably sitting in the back corner looking incredibly awkward. The token white boy, Tim (the Spelling Bee is the only event where you can apply the "token" description to the white kid, and Cordes immediately coined him the Great White Hope), has his khaki's pulled up under his armpits and crosses his legs when he sits. And all the parents are sitting stage-left, rooting on their little prodigies; Momma needs a new set of encyclopedias!

Now, you may think that I love making fun of these kids, based on my comments above. But the truth is that I'm only making fun of them to make me feel good about myself. I am jealous of these kids. I want to be these kids. I love the Spelling Bee. I want Dr. Jacques Bailly giving me the etymology of a word. I want Erin Andrews interviewing me after I triumphantly return to my seat after a correctly-spelled word (how lucky are these kids?!). I want to be 13 years old with a killer mustache, like our man Sidharth. These kids don't know how good they have it. I hate that I only knew 2 of the words (tagliatelle and neufchatel, fyi), and they're 13 and know the whole dictionary.

Megan, Cordes and I immediately jumped on the Kyle Mou (photo above) bandwagon as he tore through words like they were no big thang. He was the silent assassin. The spellers were droppin' like flies, running into their mommy's arms and balling their eyes out while our man Kyle stood strong, even though he is only 3'5". He finally succumbed to the word schizaffin, and before long Kavya, one of the "favorites," won the championship by spelling Laodicean after the Great White Hope had finally gotten one wrong. The tears of glory began flowing for Kavya, but here at home, there were different tears. They were tears of sadness, and they were coming from my eyes because it wasn't me there, celebrating my sweet new encyclopedias.