I Can Spell!

When I was younger, back in the dark ages, I had the worst time with spelling. It never seemed to click with me. I used to dread spelling tests because I knew I was hopeless. I blamed my inability to spell on the fact that I am left-handed. (It's a "handy" excuse. I use it a lot) I was always frustrated by teachers who told me to look up the word in a dictionary if I didn't know how to spell it. Hello, McFly! If I can't spell it then how can I look it up? Logic people, logic!

Then, along came spell check! It was love at first correction! I didn't have to know how to spell anymore! Spell check would fix all of my mistakes! Except when there was a homonym or something - in that case I would just look like an idiot. Which, come to think of it, happens frequently enough without spellcheck...

After many many many years of enjoying spell check I began to resent it. I began to hate seeing words underlined in red. It was as if my 3rd grade teacher was grading my work all over again! I actually began to pay attention to words that I frequently misspelled like maintenance, unconscious, necessary, convenience (for some reason I could never get these right).

Pretty soon I was ambitious enough to tackle miscellaneous, obsequious, ubiquitous and other strangely spelled words. Since starting school again two years ago I have had to write a multitude of papers and every time it becomes a game. A challenge. Me versus Spellcheck. And boy do I love it when I can just hit "ignore" because stupid spellcheck doesn't recognize some obscure IT technical term. Take that, Spellcheck! HA HA!

Even Blogger and I face off from time to time. I can not even describe the swell of satisfaction when I click on the tiny little check mark and discover zero misspellings. I suppose I've just found another slice of life to obsess over - but at least this obsession has a practical purpose! My elementary school teachers may not have been able to motivate me to spell but by golly, spell check did!

(as a foot note, I just hit spell check and it found that I had misspelled "describe" "tackle" and "elementary." So much for my super spelling prowess!)