I'm Not the Only One

This blog is subtitled "Uncensored, but Spell-checked" for a very good reason: I am very conscious of spelling mistakes. Certain events from my past have made me this way.

I remember in first grade making a poster-sized drawing of the Statue of Liberty (complete with picture-taking stick figure tourists) for the annual school-wide art show called Reflections. On the base of my rendition of the historic American landmark, I used a permanent marker and skillfully etched the words "Stachew of Liberty". When I showed my parents, my dad mentioned that I spelled "statue" incorrectly (for a first grader, I think I displayed great phonemic awareness with stachew). Despite my excellent sound-it-out skills, I was embarrassed to have the now unchangeable misspelling on my artwork, so I ended up cutting off the lower half of my drawing and submitted my rendition of the historic landmark from the knees up.

That's the first time I really became aware that spelling mistakes can be embarrassing, but it didn't make me permanently immune to the occasional misspelling. In fact, after graduating from college, I had a particularly funny Freudian-slip spelling error on the resume that I sent to various PR firms here in Phoenix. Rather than tell you the whole story, let me show you a picture I found recently that more than adequately explains the embarrassment I felt with my post-graduation spelling mistake:



Who knew that you could earn $145K - $204K per year with a BA in Pubic Relations? Talk about getting paid well for something that you love to do. If the VP makes that much, I wonder what the President makes...