Friday, January 20, 2012

Words And Spelling

When I was young, the first word I learned to spell was S-H-I-T. Maybe it was because my last name is Schmidt, and if you cross out every other letter it spells S-H-I-T (I'm not kidding here), and someone taught me such things. Maybe because I was a bit of a rebel growing up *see: bad kid*. Or maybe because my sisters were bad influences on me, and wanted to get me in trouble. Who knows? But the first word I remember being able to spell is the word shit.

I remember being so proud of the fact I could spell this word:
"Jim, Jim!" I yelled through the house. "I can spell a word!"
The man who was the closest thing to a father I had, looked at me with pride, "Oh? What word?"
"Shit!" I exclaimed, and with my youthful ignorance, began, "S-H-I-T."
I remember him struggling for a second while I just wanted a pat on the back, or a cookie, or something. Instead, he said, "Do you want to learn a new word?"
I shrugged, I was still stoked about my SHIT.
"Rather than S-H-I-T, put an R between the I and T," he told me.
I looked at him, "S-H-I-R-T." I allowed the letters to roll over in my head for a few minutes, "SHIRT!" I exclaimed, "I'm spelling the word shirt!"
He smiled, "I think that's a little more acceptable than the first word you spelled, no?"

Now, a million years later, sometimes when I get bored, I pick three basic words, words like THE CAT SAT, and see how many words I can spell using only those letters: THECATSAT:
The
Cat
Sat
At
Seat
Heat
Hat
etc

It's a good exercise when you get bored. I also have an affinity toward word games; scrabble, banana-grams, scrabble slam, words with friends, etc. I completely blame Jim for this affliction and my obsession with words.

I think a lot about this moment, the moment I learned how to turn shit into shirt and consider that maybe...just maybe my writing is like that. That that's what editing does for me; turns my shit into shirt, because it's much more acceptable, no?

:)

4 comments:

  1. ooh, kindred spirits. It amazes me that so many people are playing Words With Friends. Way back when, only a select few of my friends played Scrabble. When I started it wasn’t about building vocabulary, the challenge was extracting words in that jumble of tiles. Once I figured out that I could improve by unscrambling anagrams, it all fell into place. Then I got more and more hooked on creating anagrams, as my blog will attest. ... And wouldn't 'kindred' be a great play for WWF?
    Leona

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  2. That used to be one of my favorite things in school, when we got to make as many words out of Happy Halloween as we could :) I'm a substitute teacher and I always use this as a 'bonus challenge' activity :)

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  3. Awww! Jim sounds like an incredibly awesome person! I love how that one moment influenced you so much. So very cool.

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  4. @Leona, I am so in for a game of Words With Friends!! When I play regular scrabble, we just try to make words, otherwise it gets too competitive :)

    @Hope, Is it bad if when you posted Happy Halloween, I started playing along? :)

    @Peggy, He was/is an awesome person. Thanks for kind words :)

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Please know that if you comment and I don't respond, it's not because I don't love you. It's because I don't have wifi, but I do have a bad memory.

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