I just figured out why I have never been able to spell correctly, the word ‘EXERCISE’ …
God Bless my sweet Mother, and God Rest Her Soul! I miss her dearly, as she passed in August 2016.
She was such a cutie.
In fact, there is no doubt she is my Mom, because if you dress me up like a Cowgirl, and get a ‘make over’ by a Mary Kay Makeover Artist, I look an awful lot like her… in a strange sorta way…
She did the look so much better than I though … no doubt.
Can you guess which one is Mom, and which one is me…..?
Give up?
Ok, I’ll help… Dad took the picture on the right, and Mom actually added the color to it with little bottles of paint and toothpicks and other tools I wish I had paid more attention.
Betty and I created that picture on the left as part of a fund raising event for a Real Estate Political Group. That is as close to Politics I have gotten other than posting MEMEs on Face Book, and studying American History on my own since November 2012.
But this Blog is about ‘spelling’. LORD KNOWS I do not need to get started on Politics….
Somehow, since I have approached and past, the official ‘retirement age’, I have become aware that I have become a ‘grammar nazi’ and before you get upset by that term, here is a explanation in common terms…
“1. A grammar nazi knows the difference between “there,” “their” and “they’re.”
I know the difference. I cringe in my soul when I hear those misused.
I think that may have started when I discovered a Rogets Thesaurus.
This compendium of multitudes of ways to say something many ways, captured my interest, and became the first book I can remember taking to read in the bathroom.
Later I discovered there was more to life than remembering that you had been a Friday Night Football Hero at a AA ranked High School in a tiny community. Part of this transformation was in part due to the fact that I studied Brazilian Portuguese for a good while in Manaus, Brazil, and then in Sao Paulo Brazil … and the teachers were wonderful.
I realized Language was beautiful, as well as powerful.
However….
But with ME as a student, any Language and, or Professor had their work cut out for them. I was still the son of Parents who were my first ‘teachers’ of speaking my Native Tongue, TEXAN. ( I am a Native Texan)
I developed a use of words that still has a peculiar … flavor …
Now lets stir this mix a little more… my wife Betty… ‘The Wordsmith’. Her hair was the first physical thing I noticed about her, followed closely by the Rocky Jeans she wore … But, the thing that confounded me the most was the fact that she was the first ‘Wordsmith’ I remember encountering. We still have some unbelievable conversations, and after 20 + years, I am still tantalized by her construction and use of words.
… and I digress from the point I sat out to make …
Today, I have been alive 23,067 days according to my friend Siri. Until yesterday, the 23,066 th day, I could never spell the word ‘EXERCISE’. I found out, I was saying the word incorrectly.
Even ‘Spell Check’ would look at me a just moan in reply.
Betty was being my faithful LIVE SPELL CHECK last evening when I exclaimed in great frustration how I could not remember the correct spelling of the word ‘exercise’.
With her enlightening, I realized I had made up a word that didn’t exist…. I was saying in my mind …’ex-sir-cize’. It is actually ‘ex-er-cize’.
I guess I am hooked on a phonics that is a unknown language. One made up from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, the Dust Filled Cotton Fields of the High Plains of Texas, and the travels of this my soul in this physical world, and all the travels taken in innumerable books and fantasizes of a rabid mind.
If you had ever seen a letter written by my Mom, you would understand the ground work for the way I learned to talk… spell … and see the words in my mind. This the way I say them, and attempt to spell them.
I just want Mom to know, I am still learning how to speak. I am still learning to spell. I am still learning to … learn.
Mom, I am still bewitched, bothered, and bewildered, with the endless adventures and discoveries that are ‘out there’ …
I am the traveler I am today because of you. Somewhere that part of you as an adventurer found a fertile ground in my passion. But boy, we sure do say some things really weird, and we can’t always spell it correctly…. huh!?
oldmanskinandbones.com
(I normally close each blog with the usual ”I don’t count calories, I don’t measure protein, I don’t fear carbs” but I am going to close this bog with out bragging about being FREE from those misinformed bondage’s of foolish unhealthy diets)
I am just going to celebrate this milestone in my life and ONE MORE TIME, spell, with out asking Betty for help……
‘exercise’
If you only knew how much fun ‘that’ was …… !!