It was fifth grade science. It was my turn to read aloud. Everything was going quite swimmingly until I messed up and read, “Single-celled orgasm.” At the time, it wasn’t actually that big of a deal. I remember having the feeling that I had mispronounced the word, but I didn’t know what an orgasm was at the time, so I wasn’t really embarrassed.Cut to a few years later. I’m in some office waiting room and I’m flipping through a Cosmopolitan magazine. It should be called COsmOpOlitan magazine. I not only learned the definition of orgasm, I learned the sexual positions I should be doing to best achieve one and how to have multiple ones. I was mortified. I wasn’t really worried about the other kids in my fifth grade class because they probably didn’t know what one was at the time either. All I could think about was Mr. Wilcox and how, when I said “single-celled orgasm," he must have been stifling his laughter. I imagined that he went home and told Mrs. Wilcox and that I would forever be known in the Wilcox household as the single-celled orgasm girl. He would probably write about it in his memoir.
Well, I’ve realized over the years that I shouldn’t have been that worried. Apparently, saying orgasm instead of organism is a pretty common error. I’ve heard a bunch of other people admit to making the same error.
It always softens the blow a little bit when I find out that I am not the only one who has made a mistake, which might explain why I did what I did yesterday. I can’t believe I am even telling anyone, but, you know, blog content before dignity.
Yesterday, as I was writing something, I blanked out: I couldn’t remember if it was desparate with an a or desperate with an e?
So, I looked it up and realized it was desperate, with an e.
But, that wasn’t all I did. After that, I Googled “most commonly misspelled words” hoping to find that I wasn’t the only one who made this error.
Well, it was not on the list.
But I did come up with a trick so that I will never have to go through that humiliation again. I will use Desperate Housewives to remember to use an e instead of an a because Eva Longoria is in Desperate Housewives and her name starts with an E.
You can use that trick if you want to, but you probably won’t have to since I am apparently the only person in the world who can’t spell desperate.
However, if anyone out there wants to share their misspellings, I could really use the support.
12 comments:
True story: one time I forgot how to spell 'the'. Sad, but true. *sigh*
And yeah, orgasms instead of organisms is a pretty common mistake. Kids in my ninth grade biology class didn't make that mistake but only because we read the word 'organism' out loud very slowly and carefully. As in, "Single celled OR-GAN-ISMS..." Needless to say, this also caused immature giggles. :)
I suport you...winks
It once took me a good ten minutes to remember how to spell sword. It was just gone.
haha thats funny that you will always remember that memory!
and I'm going to use your trick ;o)
I often don't know when to double up letters and it drives me mad. For example "occassion" (one S or two), hospitality (one L or two), accommodation (one M or two) - and there doesn't seem to be a rule.
Would you like to hear about my organism too?
Thanks for another great post.
All the best, Boonsong
One of my most painful childhood memories is when my uncle asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said "pianist." He started laughing and said, "You want to be a penis. A penis!!" Then everyone laughed. To this day I won't say the word aloud, but will say "A person who plays the piano."
Heh heh, your blog is cool. ;]
Let's see, I mispell Feburary all the time. Is that even correct, what I put? /:
I have a tool at school called "My Math Lab" I had to call Tech support about a problem I was having in the MML but instead I told the guy I was having a problem with "My meth lab" I was so embarrassed....
To this day, I have to break down "definite" into de-fi-nite (pronouncing it "dee-figh-night")to get the vowels right.
I have to use tricks to spell correctly, but still mess up. Learning a foreign language made it worse. German! Where do those i's and e's go? And, vaccuumming - just can't do it!
I always want to spell village as villiage. And then when I heard about the iVillage.com site, it just confused me more. I'll take your advice and say, "There's no 'i' in village."
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