The Seventh Sense

Did you ever see the movie The Sixth Sense, where the kid says "I see dead people?" The poor little guy was quite tormented by his visions. I have a similar problem: I see writing mistakes. You know, like spelling errors, typos and grammatical errors. No matter how hard I try, I can't stop. They just pop out at me whether I want them to or not. It irritates my family but I just can't help it and I thought I'd try to see if I can at least get some positive use out of this horrible affliction.

I know I risk also irritating my blog readers as much as I do my family, but listen, this is important. You never know what can happen from even a basic mistake. We can all easily imagine the things that could change by omitting just a single tiny little word like 'not.'

Oh and sure, we have spell-check, but we need to be careful about that as well. I can see some of you rolling your eyes and not quite believing how bad it can be so I guess I'll have to give an example of what happened several years ago to poor little John Doe (I'm protecting his identity of course).

Little Johnny Doe decided one day he wanted to try his hand at writing an essay and since it was an election year, the topic he chose was "keeping promises." He was just learning to use the new-fangled technological advance called computer spellcheck and when he ran the software, he noticed he spelled the word promises wrong. He saw several choices offered and so he picked the one that looked right. And below is how his paper came out:

The Importance of Keeping Promiscuous
By John Doe

Keeping promiscuous is very important. It tells people what kind of person you are. It tells people about your character. It is not fair or right to cross your fingers or your legs to get out of keeping promiscuous.

You should listen to your parents because they know all about keeping promiscuous. When they got married, they told the whole world about their intention of keeping promiscuous. This is very important to your future husband or wife.

Keeping promiscuous is also very important when you are someone like the president of the United States. I think most people believe President Clinton has done a good job keeping promiscuous.

When you owe money, sometimes you sign promiscuous notes. This means you’ll pay in order to keep promiscuous.

When I grow up and become an adultery, I will always be keeping promiscuous because that’s important to me.

NOW tell me it doesn't matter.