When I was a young child I had an awakening to the fact that spelling was not my cup of tea. My childhood friend Rosalie was the intellectual type who could often be found in a squatting position looking at bugs in the dirt. Her twin Rachelle was the tomboy type who was the fastest girl on her big wheels in the neighborhood. I was a bit more in touch with my faint feminine side, but we still all managed to play nice. Rose would win our spelling bees with regularity. When comparing my spelling skills to hers I felt like a dunce. I could read like the wind, but spelled like a hillbilly. I tried not to care, but I did. I still do.
Sadly I rely heavily on the spell check even to this day. Interestingly enough when I come across writings with gross misspellings and grammatical errors I have a hard time reading on. I guess I am a misspelling hypocrite. Even though spelling does not come naturally to me, if I see as I am typing along on my computer that the word gets underlined indicating an error, I will try 2-3 times to get it right before giving up and looking the word up. I want to learn from my mistakes! I don't seem to improve much over time though. If you aren't spelling everything right by the age of 40 I think you can pretty much consider yourself an old dog who can't learn new spelling tricks by now. (Although I have to give myself props for just spelling 'consider' correctly on my own, that is a word that I naturally want to spell with two Cs). Maybe it's not too late for me after all! (Whoops, spoke too soon, I just tried to spell afterall without a space-duh! What would Rose say to me?)
One time when I had been writing to a friend on his mission he sent me a form letter of sorts that was supposed to be a joke asking questions like "What would you like our first date upon my return be?" and "Please put your lip prints in the space below" etc... The 4 page form was riddled with misspellings (this was before spellchecking-yes I am that old). At my tender age of 19 I was not even able to recognize them, but my friend Rose had a hay-day with her red pen correcting all the mistakes. We sarcastically answered all the questions and returned the form. Let's just say he was not amused. Strangely he still took me out when he returned. It didn't go far though. (Thankfully!)
I have to compare one of my spelling defenses to my old pal Porky Pig. You know how when Porky gets into one of his stuttering fits he starts off with one word and when he can't get it out instead of pursuing that word any longer he just chooses another one. For example he'll say, "Hey guys lets build this house out of st st st sti sti sti st st... mn mn wood." Well I do that with spelling all the time! I was typing the word acquaintance the other day and couldn't get it right and was too lazy at the time to look it up so I went with friend. Even though I really couldn't call that person my friend. No one has to know. But now you all do. I wonder if there is ever a study on my writings if one can tell that I do this by the words that I use (or don't use). If there is ever a name attached to this type of thing I think it should be called Porky Pig Spelling. Works for me!
