http://www.sportspickle.com/features/volume3/2004-0609-spellingbee.html
Christopher Heck, a finalist at last week?s Scripps National Spelling Bee, was eliminated when he was unable to spell the word ?girlfriend.? Bee champion David Tidmarsh then clinched the title by successfully spelling ?autochthonous,? a word meaning ?indigenous.?
Heck, 13, gamely tried to spell ?girlfriend? for several minutes, asking its origin (English), definition (?a favored female companion or sweetheart?) and for it to be used in a sentence. Bee Master Michael Winchester provided Heck with the sentence: ?You will never have a girlfriend,? prompting the boy to break into tears and run off the stage.
...
But Heck said he was unable to spell ?girlfriend? simply because the word is foreign to him and because girls think he is weird, not because he is taunted about it. ?My mother homeschools me because she says I?m special and that the normal kids at public school would be a detriment to my educational well-being, so I don?t get ridiculed too much ? except when my family takes its monthly trip to the shopping mall,? he said. ?Then I get my share of abuse if I stray away from mother or father.?
Heck claims the Spelling Bee was only the second time he ever heard the word ?girlfriend.? ?I once heard it on television when I was staying at my cousin?s house while my mother was giving birth to my little sister, so I know what it means,? he said. ?But that was the only time. We don?t have a television at my house because my parents say TV is for proletariat ignoramuses.?
Riley said the Bee Master Winchester has been reprimanded about his choice of context sentence for Heck?s word.? ?Not only did he use a word that is a bit risky with most of these kids,? said Riley, ?but the sentence he used to describe it was highly inappropriate. I can assure you it won?t happen again.?
?I apologized to Heck about making him cry,? said Winchester. ?I didn?t mean to do it, I just couldn?t find the paper with the context sentence, so I simply said what came to my mind first. I looked up at that kid and all I could think was: ?You will never have a girlfriend.? I?m sorry he took it so personally.?