Zipbag of Bones

I can't spell.

I should have gotten the hint back in 3rd grade when I won my classroom spelling bee and earned a spot in the school-wide spelling be which was held on the auditorium stage which doubled as the cafeteria, and I was given my first word ("distinct") - a word I had never heard before that very moment - and I decided it was one of those "trick" words that was spelled all fancy-like, and so I thought of the most likely spelling ("d-i-s-t-i-n-c-t") and threw in a fancy letter ("k") in place of the "c", and thus was sent in tears back to my spot on the floor of the cafeteria. SHAME.

DAMN YOU, Webster, and your stupid fucking dictionary. I memorized the spelling of "antidisestablishmentarianism" because it was the longest word in our spelling bee study packet, and these bastards at Thomas Jefferson Elementary hit me with "distinct."

Yet despite that massive FAIL, I've continued living my life as if I knew how the fuck to string letters together in an order which does not equal retarded. Yes, Sarah Palin, I said it. RETARD. *spell checks "retard"* **continues** And over time, thanks to hundreds of novels and dozens of embarrassing mistakes and MILLIONS of uses of the spell check feature on any program ever invented on which people write things, I have slowly begun to leave the shame of that third grade failure behind me, where no doubt it's been farted on. Repeatedly.

What?

But there are words which I will never remember how to spell. Stupid words that are not difficult to remember how to spell, but which always tango in my brain and come out looking wrong, even when they are right, and looking right, especially when they are wrong.

Words like: "minute" and "niece" and "subconscious."

Then there are words which I have to ::really:: think about before typing them because if I'm not paying attention, my retarded starts to show.

Things like: "its" vs. "it's" and "which" vs. "that" and OHMYGODMAKEHERSTOPSPELLINGTHINGS. Because have you noticed that when I call attention to the spelling that (which?) is involved in typing out a post, you feel like you're in class which (that?) invariably elicits a knee-jerk, STOP THE LEARNING response, and is probably why you are free-basing crack right now.

But if I just type out a post as per usual - without calling attention to the process of spelling words in that post - then you don't realize that what I'm actually doing is spelling words so you don't feel like you're in class and is probably why you're drunk every time you stop by this blog.

Or maybe it's the other way around.

STATE CAPITOL.