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“D-e-f-e-n-t-l-y,” I muttered, my tongue poking out of the corner of my mouth, as I wearily tried to finish the document I had been working on for the past four hours.
I had waited until the last minute to get a project in for work because, while I learned how to win a beer chugging contest and how to find out my ex-boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s dog’s name in college, I haven’t quite mastered the important lesson of “don’t procrastinate.”
Still, there’s a special kind of joy in staying up way past your usual bedtime to get a project finished. The endless pots of coffee, the sweet scent of desperation reeking off of you, and the crippling anxiety as you peruse social media for a distraction only to see all of your friends hanging out without you.
It’s enough to make everyone swear they’re never waiting until the last minute, but that rush of finishing right before the deadline and fucking nailing it? It keeps us going back for more.
So, it should come as no surprise that a mere few days ago, you could find me hunched over my dining room table (that’s a very forgiving description of the old table I got at Goodwill that’s sitting in the corner of my apartment kitchen) at 2 a.m., trying to finish a project before 8 a.m. that I had had a full month to work on.
I glanced down at my notes, ready to finish the conclusion and knock the entire bitch out, when I noticed an offensive red line under the word.
Weird, I thought, abandoning my notes and right-clicking on the offending letters. At this point, trying to actually spell anything correctly was out of the question. My fingers were just doing their own thing, putting together letter combinations and hoping for the best. I mean, as long as you get most of the letters correct in a somewhat understandable combination, spell check should do it from there.
As I gazed at my word options, however, I realized that I was more offbase that I even expected. My heart started racing and fury coursed through my veins as I glared at my only two choices. This word, this fucking word, was keeping me from nestling down into my bed and getting a few peaceful hours of sleep before handing this over to someone who would give it half a glance and deem it acceptable.
My first option? Decently. Obviously incorrect. What I was trying to say DEFENTLY didn’t have a “c” in it.
My second and only other option? Defiantly. Also incorrect. I mean, I was defiantly staring at my cursor, refusing to believe I was this offbase because hello? How hard could spelling a fucking word be? I write words for a fucking living!
For some reason, that word, that one fucking word, has always been a struggle for me. I’m not sure why. I mean, sure. There end up being way more “i’s” and less “e’s” than one would originally think, but still. You’d think after the number of times I’ve had to copy the word, Google it, change a letter, Google it, then change another letter before realizing it’s spelled d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y, I would have learned it by now.
I like to think we all have elusive words that make our brains shut down. I’m not sure what it is about the letter combinations but something about how everything is placed makes your head freeze and say “what the actual fuck?”
The thing is, just because you’re a lazy POS, it doesn’t mean you’re stupid. It just means that instead of learning how to spell a 10 letter word, you’ll defiantly spell it incorrectly for most of your life, thus wasting literal hours of your existence correcting, cursing, and looking up how to properly spell it time and time again. See? What’s so stupid about that?.
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Rachel Varina
if it doesn't have snack or seats, i'm not there. hate mail/Sunny references can be sent to itsrachelvarina@gmail.com
@rachelvarina
@rachelvarina
Restraunts…. Restraints… Resturants….
Restaurants
Thanks. I’ll never spell restrooms right again
Glad you finally found a picture, brother
Feelin good. Feelin great.
What the duck are you talking about?
Hey, watch the fowl language.
If spell check didn’t exist I would still be trying to pass second grade. I’d be like Billy Madison but without the money and Pete Sampras’ wife
On Tuesday I spent fifteen minutes on my final trying to get close enough to “bureaucratic” for spell check to figure out what I was trying to say. Never did get there so I changed the entire sentence.
Pro Tip: say something into your phone microphone. Unless you can neither spell nor pronounce it you’re gonna save a lot of time. Also separate is mine. I want to say Seperate every. single. time. That unit on A Separate Peace in high school English was a bitch.
Everyone has a word they will never spell correctly the first time. For me, it’s inconvenience and I thank spell check whenever I use it
High School Freshman algebra class, teacher deducted everyone a half-point because nobody spelled “coefficient” correctly.
Mine is gauge (just did it again). It would be so easy for me to just avoid using that word, but I like to test myself, usually with failure as the result.
I spell this wrong every single time.
Greeks invented spell check. You’re welcome.
My uncle was a professor of English Lit. And until the day he died he used a typewriter. A goddamn typewriter. He had to whiteout or just redo the page if he screwed up. I can’t even imagine living that kind of life.
You’re not alone, I receive more “defiantly” dms and bumble messages than I would care to admit.
I once used a thesaurus instead of writing “Definitely” because of this feeling. “Absolutely” is a good substitute.