Spelling Desaster...Desaster....Disaster....

Common sense tells us that certain people are not cut out for certain jobs.

For example, someone with a serious wool allergy shouldn't herd sheep professionally.

A highway patrolman who gets car-sick would also be somewhat less-effective in his chosen field.

As would a politician with a conscience and/or moral center. They just wouldn't be able to function in the accepted manner of their professions.

I have enough common sense to see the problems with the scenarios I mentioned above, but not enough to stop me from taking a job that requires a skill that I do not possess...spelling.

Yes, I am an English teacher who can't spell. Feel free to mock me. You wouldn't be the first. I have always had a great deal of trouble with spelling. If not for spell check, you would need a urim and thummim to read this post. I kid you not.

I was in 6th grade before I learned how to correctly spell two of my brother's names, and I still have to stop and hunt out old family newsletters when I have to write or type one of the other brothers' names.

One year, I wrote a letter to Santa asking for my own dessert that wouldn't have to share with my four piggy brothers, but I accidentally left out the second "s" and ended up opening a big box of sand on Christmas morning.

Today in Sunday school, I was writing on the white board and knew I wouldn't be able to spell "enemies" without stopping to think about it, so I wrote the "e" and the "n" and then just did a bunch of cursive scribbles behind it.

Experiences like those have inspired me to agree with former President Andrew Jackson that, "It is a damn poor mind that can't come up with more than one way to spell a word." If I could cross-stitch, that would be on every pillow in my apartment...and the phrases would be spelled differently on every one of them!

When I was a Junior in high school, the Post Register started paying me to write cute little feature stories and short, funny columns for the paper. I was so excited to have landed such a prestigious first job, that I practically tackled my old 5th grade teacher to tell her the news when I saw her in Walmart. When I told her that I would be writing for the biggest newspaper in our part of the state, she got a sad look on her face, put her hand on my shoulder and said, "Sweetie....do they know that you can't spell?"

I wanted to tell her that the Post Register Computers had spell-check (which was true) and that I had gotten much better at spelling since 5th grade (which wasn't true), but I did neither. Instead, I flashed back to having that very same teacher hand back yet another one of my failing 5th grade spelling tests and was completely overcome by a flood of pre-teen angst right there in the hosiery department (clean-up of a mental break-down on aisle 15!)

Now that I think about it, maybe I became a junior high English teacher because of my spelling issues, and NOT in spite of them. Maybe I wanted to help other kids learn to spell without having the same emotionally crippling experiences that I had as a child. Or maybe I just wanted to surround myself with people who were worse spellers that I was....hummmmm.....

But even though my motives for becoming an English teacher are not clear, one thing that should be perfectly obvious is my empathetical attachment to my fellow poor-spellers. Take my nephew Max.

I have always loved Max, and will always love him no matter what. But when he brought this drawing home from his genius kid summer camp, I immediately called my attorney and had my will rewritten so that Maxwell is my sole beneficiary (which may have been a mistake considering he is the only one of my nephews with the temperament, resources, or connections to put a contract out on my life) .

But all joking about Max's fondness for contract killers aside, I feel and deep bond with the kid because of his adventures in spelling.

I feel the same way about the person or persons who typed up this flier, made hundreds of copies, and then tacked them up from one end of the valley to the other. In fact, I think that we spelling-challenged folks should organize and form some sort of support group. BAD SPELLERS OF THE WORLD UNTIE...I mean UNIET....or is it UNITE...

Hummmm.....Perhaps all official "Habitual Bad Spellers Club" business should be conducted over the phone.

Yeah. A phone call would be much better.