I love numbers. Anyway, I thought of something else. Ah ha! It worked. Technology. The image this device lets me add is of today's Richmond Register, the beginning of an interesting article on the reenactment of the Cival War Battle of Richmond. Some editor misread the last word in the second paragraph, obviously. I handed the paper to Mary, who read the second paragraph, and wondered what the fuss was about. I drew her attention to the last word which she had also read as the author intended, not as the author wrote, however. Well, come to think about it, we are all vulnerable, every day of the year in one way or another. Some of us more so than others.
I used to make writing errors, some only uncorrected typos, back in the days when there was no spell check, just white correction fluid. Egad! Don't miss that aspect of my past. Most were just ignorance and stupidity. I used to write on the blackboard in class from the beginning of the class till the end. I especially loved charts and diagrams. However, among my many blunders, one day I wrote "lier" on the board for "liar." OMG. My blunder occurred to me later that day. I wrote it correctly the next class period just to prove I could do it, though I am not sure I told the class. I probably wanted them to think the first mistake was just a blackboard typo, and thus made up a reason to write it again.
In fact, my problems with classroom spelling became so bad that I just confessed to later classes, "I can't spell worth er ...! So when you see a word gone awry, please let me know and I'll correct it." In later years, while writing on the board, when I encountered a treacherous word, like "rapor", ha, I would ask the class, how to spell it, confessing my total ignorance of the correct spelling. Actually, that was a word I also misspelled like "liar" before it in my early years. Sigh. It has never been easy being me.
One of my most humiliating public performances with letters occurred in the college snack bar. It was June 23, 1973. What a memory, eh? Well, not exactly. I had been up all night with the birth of our first-born child, and I was teaching a summer school course, 010 I think, a class poorly-prepared students were required to take unless they tested out. Well, I was sitting in the snack bar faculty room, drinking coffee, when the very nice lady who ran the place, came over to my table, slapped a cardboard plackard down in front of me and said make a sign that says "raisin rum." I knew I did not know how to spell "raisin," but there was no one to ask. So I wrote "raisen rum" on the plackard, gave it back to the manager who placed it in the wall flavor menu whatever holder.
I was very young then, and very ignorant about many things, some important, some not. The next day I was sitting there at the same table, only this time with the college registrar, a forbidding woman by the name of Virginia Auvil (not sure about the spelling of her name either). There were several more people sitting with us, and she was fussing about the general poor standards in the student body, witness the spelling of "raisin" in the snack bar menu. What? OMG! I cleared my throat, excused myself, saying nary another word, walked around to the student section, asked for the "raisen rum" sign, quickly corrected it on the back, and went home, sweating profusely.
Liar, rappour, raisin, those are the ones I caught back in the early days here, though I remember that during the first year, I sent a letter to President Weatherford wherein I misspelled something. Secretary maybe. That one I'm not certain about. Whatever it was, I caught it too late to correct it before the letter went to him. I mentioned it to my student worker at the time, Maggie, but she just said something to the effect that she thought that was the way I wanted it (of course she had noticed it) and he'll just think it was the student worker's typo. Groan. I gave her permission to correct any misspelling she found in the future. And as far as I know she did.
There it is, 75 years old and still can't spell, though there are at least three words I will never forget; in fact it is even worse now. I used to do book signings for the phone poem books. As long as I stuck to "Best Wishes" I was all right, but too often they wanted complex things, like make it out to Shirley. Who? Is that "Shirley" with an "S"?