Spelling: My Worst Subject

I was just reading through some of my more recent posts and I can't believe how many spelling and typing errors there are. I guess I could proofread them before posting but I usually don't think about it. There's even a spellcheck function on Blogger but I rarely remember to use it. Funny since spelling was always my worst subject in school. I remember in first grade that whenever a student scored 100% on a spelling test they were given a star to put by their name. As the school year progressed I had the least number of stars with one. It became a source of shame and anguish for me, so I decided to be proactive about the whole affair and cheat. However, I wasn't a very good cheater. I had the spelling list on the ground under my desk. After the test was over, I snatched up the list and quickly put it in my desk. Of course, a kid the next row over tattled on me, the stoolie. The teacher came over to the desk and searched through it while I gave my best look of indignant disbelief. Thankfully she never found the list which allowed me to shoot some hostile glares at the kid who told on me. Of course, karma intervened and I ended up misspelling "door" of all things. (Like I said, I wasn't a very good cheater). I think the whole affair so scarred me that I didn't cheat again until 11th grade English vocab with my friend Dave, but even then I think we did it more for laughs than for grades since most of our time we spent passing notes about Mrs. Blier's wicked coffee breath and substantial (and often sweaty) girth which she enjoyed draping...shudder... over her students when they had the courage to ask a question. I'm not really an expert on the secret pleasures of high school English teachers and after that experience I hope I never am. I also seem to recall that Dave and I derived a considerable amount of pleasure in demonstrating our illustrating skills by drawing various macabre pictures alluding to Hemmingway's suicide. Kids. Goofing off was a sport in that class, but I don't think I ever laughed so much on a daily basis. It's not hard to imagine why to this day I have no recollection of "Ethan Frome" except that apparently it's rife with irony. Go figure.