ɹǝʇʇǝן ʇǝןǝɹɐɔs ǝɥʇ

When I was growing up my “bad spelling” meant F’s, D’s and the occasionally victorious C- on the odd vocabulary test when the planets where aligned just write. It wasn’t until I was in my second year of college that two independent faculty members took me aside and told me that I had a learning disordered called phonetic dyslexia.

I remember being defensive at the time. After all I was 18 and attending a prestigious liberal arts college, how could I possibly have a learning disorder? A trip to the campus library (because of course this was before the days of Google) and pouring through the periodicals on phonetic dyslexics, I realized that the way I misspelled words was unique to this specific learning disability (SLD). I also made the decision in that moment that I didn’t care. We were on the cusp of computerized spellchecking in the early 1980’s and I knew that it would only be a matter of time before I could rely on a machine to free me from spell-bound-bondage.

There was a period when I would not let a hand written letter go out of my office unless I had first typed it into XyWrite and then copied it letter by letter onto paper. But that was also when I wore high heeled shoes, blush, lipstick and eyeliner, pencil skirts, a bra and hairspray. Okay maybe not a bra unless I happened to be nursing one of my three children for nearly three years each.

Yes at some point I had to acknowledge that I was unconventional and for the most part proud of it. So I found my way into Birkenstocks, loosely draped dresses and eccletic if not down right pagen accessories that would celebrate my sense of whimsy and wonderment.

Once established in my career and my technical prowess spoke for itself, I no longer felt the need to mask my creative spelling — that had once been such a source of embarassement and shame. I see the art of spelling today as more of a gentleman’s agreement rather than some universal law. So for those of you who find the easter eggs in my videos, blogs and gasp even on occasion one of my published books (!!) I hope you will smile and consider that all of this is about play.

Can you even for a moment, close your eyes and remember how wonderful it felt as a small child when you could play with abandon and not worry that you were doing it wrong? Something that felt so good, liking singing to a song on the radio without someone telling you that you were off key? Dancing in the dark without concern that your body did not meet some societal standard?

Well, that’s how I feel in this moment … writing my blog without my spell checker turned on.

Warm smile, deep bow and a sly wink.