Sometimes even the best laid plans can go awry.

I'm talking about the spelling bee I briefly competed in Friday night. The plans I'm talking about were as follows: be competitive in the spelling bee so that I could have something to write about here.

I was planning everything out in my head for the column, thinking of great opening lines and explaining how, because it is a 'competition,' a spelling bee is fair game for a sports column.

Everything seemed to be going according to plan the night of the event. I even got to wear the No. 3, like another Marquette superstar. With thoughts of Dwyane Wade dancing in my head and delusions of grandeur, I began to practice, hard. I worked on such toughies as "definitely" and "hippopotamus," as well as "2Pac" and "Fitty Cent," in case they threw any proper nouns in there.

I was certain that I, a powerful journalism major and Tribune staff member, would dominate such an event. I could just see the video montage they would make for me afterward, with me spelling in slow motion and U2 playing in the background, knocking out contestant after contestant in my own version of Manifest Destiny.

Maybe I was just too cocky. I told the people around me I'd be writing a column as long as, ha, I didn't go out in the first round. The first two contestants had been knocked out on two words so difficult it wouldn't be proper to print them here. Still, I was sure victory was mine as I approached the microphone.

"The next word is failus." What? Can you repeat that? "Failus." It couldn't be! I had never heard of such a word before! Why didn't I get "hippopotamus?!" So I just went ahead with F-A-I-L-U-S, which was incorrect. I turned around, and the word was: phalanx.

'I know what a phalanx is,' I thought to myself. 'It's what comes after the warrior units in Age of Empires.' I just couldn't make out what the guy was saying. I don't know what Freud would say, but all I heard was "phallus." I knew it couldn't be that so I just went ahead with "failus."

Anyhow, despite being a strong advocate of good sportsmanship and generally acting above the age of five, I tore off my number and threw it in the garbage. I then raced out of the Varsity Theatre as fast as my legs could move me.

The defeat was horrible in two regards. First, I had lost miserably, and all my hopes had been crushed.

Second, I knew that I would have absolutely nothing to write about.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on April 14 2005.