Well, I don't remember much about my childhood, but I do (vaguely) remember one incident. I was in 2nd grade, and somehow I got into a debate with a classmate over how to spell "penis". I thought it was "penus". In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't know. Anyhoo, some little hellion in the room had a Speak & Spell (toy!). So one of us typed in one version or the other, and the end result was an audible, robotic pronunciation that, whether right or wrong, was loud and intelligible enough for the teacher to hear. Well, for some reason, her course of action was to have me write "I will not type penis into a Speak & Spell" or something to that effect some unmemorable number of times.
I'm mostly over the trauma of this incident, but it still raises some interesting questions. Namely, why was Mrs. Smith so obsessed with penis? And did she find work soon after? Regardless, a valuable lesson was learned, and to this day I have little tolerance for people who can't spell. Oof.
I-t-apostrophe-s O-p-e-n.
