In a world without spell-check, I would be jobless, homeless or worse: the next Bachelorette.

Long before I wanted to be a writer (and long before my life’s plan B was making 20 men fall in love with me via reality television), I was a bad speller. I didn’t realize it until fourth grade when my teacher would choose a different student’s name to be the bonus question on our spelling tests.

The week, it was my name, and I was ecstatic. Like the asshole fourth-grader I was, I finished the test with confidence and even ridiculed my neighbor after she had spelled my last name “Shuster,” omitting the “C.” Amateur. How elementary of her.

But the day the tests were returned, my teacher placed it on my desk facedown, shaking his head. Confused, I turned it over, my eyes immediately drawn to the red “X” at the bottom of the page. “Sarah Schuser,” my careful fourth-grade handwriting read.

Schuser — I had forgotten the “T.”

It was then, in that moment of humility, I had found my greatest weakness.

I was bad at spelling.

Everything after that event was a whirlwind of failed spelling tests and red dotted lines. I would sit at a spelling bee before it even started and panic when I had to write on the whiteboard. It became part of my identity, an inside joke among friends. The class clown, the girl who wore a bra first and then me: the bad speller. That’s one for the yearbook.

Because English is a hard language to learn, OK?

“‘I’ after ‘E,’ except before ‘C’” is a lie. The “R” is suddenly silent in “February.” It sure doesn’t help that we, as people, pronounce everything wrong. You say, “asterick,” but it’s spelled “asterisk.” You say “hi-archy,” but it’s spelled “hierarchy.” And why would anyone make words as similar as “pitcher “ and “picture”?

These are the problems that haunted my youth. Other girls my age were worrying about boys and body issues – I was agonizing about weekly spelling tests. I know, my situation was profoundly more difficult.

But it didn’t stop me from writing. When that pesky red line appears on my Microsoft Word document, I left-click. When that doesn’t work, I try Google. There are so many ways to get around actually learning how to spell that I never did.

As a result of that, I’ve been able to blissfully float around my weakness. Most of the time.

Every once in a while, there’s that typo in an important email. My friend laughs at my really rough drafts. In a discouraging moment, it’ll hit me: I’m a fraud. I’m bad at the basic root of my craft.

I should not be able to get away with this.

In what other profession can you be bad at the most fundamental element of your field and still get to pursue it?

I could have Parkinson’s disease, but that wouldn’t stop me from becoming a surgeon! I might not have peripheral vision, but that can’t stop me from becoming a bus driver! I’m a liar, but that doesn’t stop me from becoming a politician!

Only the 21^st-century writer can get away with shit like I do.

Imagine me in the mid-20th century: Hemingway, Fitzgerald and I in a Parisian café just chilling, pretending to be European, nonchalantly chain-smoking. The only sound is the “tap, tap, tap” of our typewriters.

“Yo, Hemingway! Is the word spelled ‘abandEn’ or ‘abandOn’?”

That old man would probably tell me to walk right into the sea.

Besides the fact that I would waste paper and ink, no editor would ever look at a draft I typed on a typewriter. No spell-check, let alone a “Delete” key. In those times, I would more likely be Hemingway’s hooker than intellectual equal.

Except even good hookers have mastered the basic elements of their craft. Damn it.

That is why I dedicate this column to spell-check. Because of spell-check, I might have a shot at having a career.

Thanks spell-check. I definetly nede yu.

Sarah Schuster is a sophomore studying magazine journalism, but if that doesn’t work out, she’ll probably end up building a Grilled Cheese and Puppy Emporium. Inquire about grilled cheese at seschust@syr.edu. Puppies: @saraheschuster.

Published on March 7, 2013 at 3:44 am