Damn, you Spell Check

by Toby Meuli

The year: 1993. The place: Pine Lane Elementary’s cultural center, The Cafetorium. The challenge: The annual all-school spelling bee. And the winner: Me.

That’s right. I was once a spelling bee champ. And I even remember the winning word: witch. With a "t" because I asked for it in a sentence and cleverly deduced that it was a noun, an evil old woman to be exact. W-I-T-C-H. The Cafetorium went nuts. Marisa O’Malley winked at me. I grinned and accepted the trophy. Someone took a picture.

It has been 17 years since that fateful day, and it pains me to admit it, but that was the peak of my spelling talent. Because a few weeks after my glorious win we started a new quarter of electives and while chasing rumors of computer games, I snagged the final spot (number 30 of 30) in Mrs. Chang’s word processing class. Little did I know that hidden deep in a pre-Steve-Jobs-Apple computer my arch spell-nemesis was quietly awaiting.

At first word processing was no big deal; the home row, Strike A, Strike S. You know the drill. Just fast fingers and muscle memory, no challenge yet. And if you were smart enough to finish early, Mrs. Chang let you spend the final 10 minutes of class playing Oregon Trail. (Always be the banker, always hunt, and never rest--even if you got dysentery.)

The day of reckoning came a few weeks into the quarter when Mrs. Chang told us to write about anything we wanted, just get our nimble fingers to put 500 semi-coherent words on the screen. "This is a test, keep your eyes on your screen and don’t worry about spelling." What? "You see, after you are finished, press F7 on the top of your keyboard and the computer will check your spelling automatically." The class sat in stunned silence. We were in the future.

So I ripped into my essay, determined to explore the wonder of this spell checking device and get onto my saved game of Oregon Trail. (There were bison that needed killing.) I finished my 500 words, struck F7 and a message came up: NO WORDS MISSPELLED. Awesome. This thing is familiar with my trophy shelf. Now, off to shoot the Colorado river.

This pattern of spell perfect essays continued until my best friend, Casey Daley, figured out that we could actually get done with our essays sooner, and to our game faster, if we never thought about spelling and relied purely on the checker at the end. The plan worked brilliantly. But I felt myself backsliding.

At first it was the harder words, reconciliation became recosiltion, stoutly became stotlie. Then the misspelled words became more abundant and my witch-level of spelling expertise began to falter. But thanks to spell check nobody noticed. Mrs. Chang thought I was a prodigy typist bound for a 90-words-minute secretary desk, Casey thought I should start going by Meriweather Lewis, and Marisa O’Malley thought we should kiss under the slide at recess.

Unfortunately, like all great lies, mine was exposed. I had a birthday party that spring and, being obedient to my Mom’s commands, sat down to write several thank you notes. There was the evidence. In clear black Bic pen. Scrawled in my new-times-roman meets etch-a-sketch handwriting was sincely, gratful, and the worst of all, surelly. My Mom went nuts. I dropped my head and pulled out a dictionary. Nobody took a picture.

So, damn you, Spell Check. 17 years later I’m not over it. Because my spelling still sucks. Damn you, for letting my spell-muscle atrophy. People say oh it isn’t technology’s fault it is our own fault if we don’t use our brains. I don’t buy it--you were forced upon me, you bastard. Thoreau’s transcendentalism was right. Man wasn’t made for your judgment and societal rules, Spell Check. Damn you, for my spell-insecurities. Damn you, for making me keep my computer nearby whenever I write a handwritten note just to double check. Damn, you all to hell Spell Checkers.

Now all that is left of my glory years is a dusty trophy in a box, the memory of a first kiss under the slide and some unbelievably well-honed virtual frontier survival skills. However, I do have a feeling that one day I will be back. One day my brain will be strong again. One day I’ll return from my Walden Spell-Pond retreat. I’ve heard rumors of some computer geniuses who know how to disable the Spell Check feature on computers. Until then, I’ll keep on practising.