“Attention, class: Your new English teacher will be Miss Spelling.” Talk about the ultimate irony. Yet, it has to have happened, maybe back when women wore girdles and hadn’t yet considered using upper lingerie as political fire starters; an era when unmarried women preferred the title of “Miss” over “Ms.” for the innocent Little Bo Peep (in desperate need of a strong herder of sheep!) ring to it.
Spelling is a skill that’s either instinctive for you or it’s not. Fortunately, I inherited the spelling gene, so unless I’m in a hurry, I spell most words correctly or sense via eyeballing when something’s wrong and fix it. Not everyone is that fortunate.
That became clear in childhood, when my high school English teacher mother brought home essays to grade. While the essays contained many variations on bad, perhaps the most classic misspelling we found involved the word “bowl,” with a freshman proclaiming his favorite part of making chocolate chip cookies was licking out the “bowel.”
There was much milk-snorting laughter at dinner that night and I went on permanent high-alert for creative misspellings. Whether perpetrated through ignorance or carelessness, it matters not. They are equally entertaining to those who pay attention. You can’t not laugh at a seasonal spell-check-defying newspaper article requesting parents bring their kids to the local shopping mall to have their picture taken with “Satan” (rather than “Santa”).
In middle school, I intercepted a nasty note in gym class that had one not-so-swift girl calling another a “retart” versus a “retard.” Either word is offensive, but at least get it right. You can’t get much dumber, except maybe to misspell “dummer,” as was done elsewhere in the note.
When I was a senior, I had the misfortune of being the object of affection for a freshman boy who fit both aforementioned descriptors. His crush on me inspired badly misspelled poetry and pathetic attempts to emulate pop culture. I regularly received “luf” notes from the guy, as in “true luf forever!”
One borrowed a line from the (then) popular movie “10,” where Bo Derek’s exotic, cornrow-beaded hair character dropped the F-bomb describing to Dudley Moore what she liked to do to “Ravel’s Bolero.” My freshman Romeo knew I played piano, so he revealed he liked to “fuch to Baytoven.” More milk snorting.
His notes also prepared me for an adulthood unwanted admirer who creepily sent roses and a framed photograph of himself to my workplace with a note stating he loved me with his heart and “sole.” Presumably that means all the way down past his toes, clear to the bottoms of his feet. He added that when he met me, he instantly knew he had found his “sole mate.”
I did not share those feelings, but as someone with a shoe fetish, I could relate to the joy of thinking one has at last found a long missing shoe. Didn’t Etta James sing about that? At last! Twenty years post-stalking, whenever I see a stray shoe along the road, I still think of him and wonder if it’s the one he needed to complete his life, if not his wardrobe.
As mentioned earlier, some of my favorite misspellings involve profanity, because the only thing more ignorant than profanity is improper use of profanity. My daughter came into possession of a children’s book about lions that was defaced with profane graffiti. I wondered: Had the perpetrators’ parents read them a preview of Robert Mansbach’s mock kids’ book for adults, Go the F@#K to Sleep, slated for release this fall?
In a failed attempt at coolness, terms like “fagit” and “bich” and the double-barreled misspelling, “mather fouker” covered the pages. “Congradulations” on that bit of “sofistication!” Wonder what “Satan” will bring you junior perverts this year for Christmas? Maybe a lump of “cole” (to make coleslaw?). Double duh!
If I knew who tagged the lion book, I would send them a copy of English as a Second F*cking Language, by Sterling Johnson. It’s subtitled, “How to swear effectively, explained in detail with numerous examples taken from everyday life.” Intelligent use of profanity matters. If you’re going to be profane, at least be profound.
DIFFERENT DRUM 