Marblehead spelling sensation turns attention to comedy skills

LYNN – Amber Born may have come in fourth place at the national spelling bee, but it’s her comic sense that spelled guffaws from the judges and chuckles from the audience during the nationally televised finals.In a word, Amber Born is f-u-n-n-y.The home-schooled Marbleheader proved to be a favorite among her peers, as well as Scripps National Spelling Bee officials, due largely to her sense of humor and whip-smart delivery that was on full display, even during the finals.She got giggles when, after her pre-recorded biography aired, she approached the microphone Thursday night and deadpanned, “She seems nice,” before spelling her word. Correctly, of course.In another round, Amber asked pronouncer Jacques Bailly: “Please give me something I know.” Given the word “malacophilous” and told it means “adapted to pollination by snails,” she replied: “I don’t know if that’s possible.”Amber, 14, never expected to land in fourth place, and she said she had no problem losing.”There were a lot of people there I looked up to, they were really good,” Amber said. “I went further than they did, so I didn’t feel bad when I lost.”It was Amber’s fourth trip to the bee, but the first time she made it into the finals and onto the national stage and live television – the first winner of The Daily Item’s bee to do so.Speaking from her Washington, D.C. hotel room on Friday, she said that spelling before a nationwide audience wasn’t much different from simply spelling on stage.”There were cameras, but I really didn’t think about it,” she said. “It didn’t make much difference.”At one point ESPN SportsCenter anchor Sage Steele, who co-hosts the competition, noted that Born was trending on Twitter, where fans talked up her laid-back sense of humor.Born said she began to get the comedy bug after seeing Jerry Seinfeld doing stand up comedy during the opening of the pilot episode of his popular 1990s “show about nothing,” “Seinfeld.”It was an eye-opener for her, she said. It made her realize maybe she could write comedy.Then she saw an episode of the mock news show “The Colbert Report,” which aired in November right after Mitt Romney lost his bid for the presidency. It opens with Stephen Colbert sitting in a bathrobe and a baseball hat with his head lying on his desk despondently, flipping his pen with his fingers.”It’s stupid, but I thought it was really funny,” Born said. “If I could write comedy like that ? I’d do stand up or anything involving comedy.”Now that she has aged out of the spelling bee, Born will have the time to improve her comedy chops, hoping to write more and watch a little more television.She has spent a significant amount of time over the last four years studying for the ultimate spelling competition, but she said it wasn’t all bad.”I spread it out, so it didn’t seem that long,”she said.And she doesn’t regret it. She had a good time, and she said she believes the additions to her vocabulary can only help.Robin Born, Amber’s mother, said it wasn’t difficult watching her daughter on the national stage.”It was much more nerve wracking watching her in Lynn,” she said. “Once she made it here, she was here, that was all that mattered.”She also said she wasn’t as surprised to see her daughter make it so far in the competition as she was to see any of the other spellers lose.”They’re all such good spellers,” she said. “They were confident and a great bunch of kids.”Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.Chris Stevens can be reached at [email protected].