I was a lousy speller as a kid. And it spilled over to an inability to sort out strangely spelled words. This is the story of my suffering.
Girl
I spelled this “gril” all throughout a book report I wrote in sixth grade about a book with an unnamed gril. I still believe that in a Midwestern accent this spelling more closely matches the pronunciation.
Schedule
In 4th grade my teacher had those cartoony classroom decorations and one of them had this word. I spent all year trying to sort out what it spelled. It was a year or two later before I realized that’s how you spell “schedule”.
Coed Naked Lacrosse
A girl at camp had this on a T-shirt. I was pretty sure I knew vaguely what Lacrosse was, but I thought those first two words were one syllable each: code nake’d lacrosse.
Jewelry
I remember sitting at my desk for ten minutes trying to figure out how to spell this word (Google didn’t always exist, kiddos). In my defense, we Hoosiers pronounce it “jew-luh-ree” which is not at all how it’s spelled.
POW*MIA
I would see these window stickers on the backs of cars and I decided it must be a summer camp of some kind: Pow-me-uh. Yeah, sounds like a summer camp.
Till
Till is a contracted “until” so it obviously only has one L right? Well it turns out if you spell it that way several times in a big company wide email at work you will get teased.
Subtlety
This word is such a spelling hot mess I just avoid ever typing it. Because those letters up there clearly spell sub-tu-letty.
Tomorrow
When I was a kid my uncle told me, “just remember Tom or Row!” and for some crazy reason it worked. I’ve never had trouble since.
Coathanger
In my defense, my iPhone says that isn’t even a word so maybe I was actually right all those years ago when I read it as “coath-anger” and my dad laughed and laughed.
Condemn
Note to 7th graders reading aloud in class: not pronounced like condom.