“Too/To” “You’re/Your” “They’re/Their/There … etc

It’s not what you think. The last thing I want to do right now is bore you with another pejorative, beaten to death post about how  painfully uncool it is to have difficulty differentiating between things like a versatile preposition and an adverb. What I am trying to get at is that it is so much more ignorant and irritating to rail into someone for the way they spell in a text situation. I would much prefer to spend my time with someone who screwed up the occasional “where too?” than someone with a haughty attitude about their own spelling capability, and was truly willing to write someone off because of the apparent lack of intelligence that comes with poor grammar. That is insane.

2016 is such a strange and silly time to be alive. It’s not like I (and I think probably many of the people I know who are inherently good with grammar) have worked very hard at being able to get “you’re” and “your” right. It’s just something I enjoy that came easily to me. On the other side of the coin, I will never excel at math. This can be either attributed to the fact that I had a (moderate) alcoholic for a third grade teacher, who took a shining to me and let me write stories instead of practicing my times tables and counting blocks (or whatever it is they teach nine year olds– I’ll never know) which consequently deeply fucked me up developmentally in the mathy part of my brain (biology was never my favorite either) OR I just simply never would have done well,  because it’s not my thing.

But I’ve certainly never had trouble getting a date because I sometimes count with my fingers. Conversely, I cannot count the number of times the people I know have been in the process of getting to know someone, only to cut things short because the other person sucks at spelling.  A counterargument to this may be that because we live in an instant, text-based world, and the dum-dums that aren’t able to  keep up are subject to some kind of social darwinism: sink or swim, bitches.  The arguer may also posit that perhaps my finger-counting is the real reason I can’t keep dates, because the mathy stuff tends to happen at the end of the date. If you’re a progressive lady who likes to split the cheque, mind you. To this hypothetical point: I would have to clutch my heart, take a good look in the mirror, practice long division, and revisit at a later time.

In conclusion, I’m saying that maybe the guy who said “your pretty” or the girl who said she’d “meet you their” is not as boorish and drooly as you think. Perhaps they possess a different intelligence, one that you can’t even begin to fathom. Maybe they are Rain Man smart when it comes to numbers (the only way to test this theory is to drop a container of toothpicks on date No.1). Maybe they had a sober third grade teacher and you’ve just met someone who will do your taxes for the rest of your life. Maybe they’re such an excellent conversationalist that you won’t even be able to hear the misplaced “to” while you’re having a rich, fulfilling discussion. You’ll never know if you don’t make the effort.

I imagine that if this post, by some miracle, were to ever gain even a mild following, there would be a sprinkling of scoffy pseudo-intellectual types reading that will notice a bounty of spelling and grammatical errors. To them, I’d have to say:

your a dick, and you missed the point. 




I’ve never blogged before. There’s something intimidating about being directly linked to your work (particularly online): the vulnerability of being unable to gauge in person, and in real-time about what someone thinks of a particular piece that you’re putting out into the world. Plus, when I envision a “Troll”, I picture the green monster from the Nicorette ads of the early 2000’s: putrid yellowish stink coming off of gnarled teeth and horns, laughing and spitting as they tear apart a collection of something that may have been near and dear to my heart.  First of all , I logically know that people have to actually be reading the stuff in order for there to be any level of serious trolling happening. Secondly, I’m not even familiar enough with how the Internet works to understand trolling, or how to gain any variety of perceived readership and make them readers happen. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely looked it up on Wiki-how, but have yet to come to any real conclusions. But there are some things  I do know about the people of the Internet: They love making fun of people and generalizations. So for my first project I’m planning on doing just that You know, like a jerk. Troll away.