Let Me Spell it Out For You With This Piss Poor Pun

In the past few days, I've been browsing through some of my old blogs I've written in the past year and I've come across an undeniable fact I've known all my life. I can't spell for shit.

And it seems to me no one else has this problem. Almost every adult I meet is a great speller even if they can‘t tell their ass from their shoelace. This is particularly embarrassing for me being that I possess a degree in English and I consider myself an somewhat avid reader. It's like if a professional carpenter who could only build lopsided park benches, but insists he'll get the local park's sitting area finished by Spring.

My lousy spelling became apparently clear to me in elementary school. Despite the fact that I would always get A's (or O's for "outstanding" in those days), in my spelling classes, the standardized CATs would prove otherwise. The CATs were the yearly standardized test I feel the whole world had to take. They stood for California Achievement Tests, conveniently named to come across as a cute family pet rather than pieces of paper that could make or break your whole single-digit-aged self. It helped make us students smile and laugh, thinking about silly cats booting around yarn with their mitten looking paws. Then we'd have to sit and take these damn tests for four fucking days.

My scores in every other subject on the test were generally excellent. I'd always score in the high 90s out of 99 in every subject, even Math. But spelling would always be somewhere in the 60s. For years, I thought it was a mistake, like I incorrectly filled in the bubbles. In fifth grade, my friend Billy got an abnormally low score of 19 on spelling. Oh how I laughed at his stupidity. Then when I got home, there were my CAT scores waiting in the mail. I got a lousy 26 out of 100, well into the below normal area.

In the seventh grade, my class had a spelling bee. I was determined to turn my spelling reputation around, round by round, until my classmates lay dead in a puddle of consonant/vowel blood, me the victor, bee-shaped sword in my hand. However, I lost in the first round on the word "quizzes." I spelled this with one "z" and, admittedly, had to spell check the world "quizzes" just now. It was embarrassing. At least I wasn't the first one out. That sad sucker lost with the word "frazzled," which is what I still am since that fateful day.

In college, I've fared no better. I've had several professors who have written things like, "This is an A paper. But due to your incessant and careless spelling, I'm forced to give you a B-. Next time, PROOFREAD." Paper after paper in the academic arena of college English writing, I've received orders from the higher-ups to check my work. And the thing is, I do proofread every paper I turn in multiple times. Yet, every time I handed in my work, the same humiliation ensues. One professor went so far as to write me a page long letter a couple semesters ago about my lackadaisical attitude about proofreading and the importance of fixing my spelling. It’s not like I’m so brash that I’m trying to make up my own language. Nor am I declaring this is the age of instant messaging, so we can spell any word how we want. I just simply can’t do it affectively.

On of Maury, there’s always a fat teen nearing a half-ton who starts crying saying they can’t control their eating habits. No matter how hard they try, the fried chicken finds it way to the pit of their gut. I’m like that fat kid, but with a high cholesterol of jumbled diction clogging my cranium. So Maury, here is my open letter to you:
“I try and try, Maury. But I just can’t stick to it. I need to straighten out my problem I think it’s time to send me to boot camp.” (muscular black guy comes out and starts yelling to respect our mama’s).

SORRY ABOUT ALL SPELLING AND GRAMMATICAL MISTAKES FROM THIS BLOG AND ON.