My world is PRETTY.
September 8, 2006 · Print This Article
The strangest thing just happened. I was typing the word “clever” in an e-mail when suddenly– rrrrrrreee!– I was stopped in my tracks, absolutely certain I had typed the word incorrectly. The letters C-L-E-V-E-R suddenly looked foreign to me, like a word in a tongue heretofore undiscovered by modern civilization. Clever? It couldn’t be right. It felt so wrong. My mind tumbled into turmoil. Clever? Root word cleve? Is cleve a root word? Wait, do I even need to worry about the root word? Is clever the root word? Cleverer? Cleverish? Cleave is a word. Cleaver? No, that’s a big old butcher knife. And that other Beaver’s last name. Cleave it to Beaver! Hahaha! Is clever even a word AT ALL? Oh! Confusion! Setting in! Look it up! Quick! For God’s sake, woman, LOOK! IT! UP! GAH!
Yup. My mind is a strange, scary place to be sometimes.
Turns out clever IS a word, according to Merriam-Webster and Oxford (AND Wikipedia, where interestingly enough I also learned that the CLEVER is a type of three-wheeled car being developed in the UK, which… hey! clever!). And now? Yep. The word looks absolutely correct, completely obvious and familiar, and I am left wondering exactly what kind of freaky mental brouhaha just occurred in my unconscious cognitive process that led to my agonizing over the spelling of a simple word like clever. I mean, honestly. Kind of makes the frantic, mildly (you heard me, mildly!) obsessive-compulsive online dictionary quest seem a bit senseless now. Silly even.
Good LORD, people. Me? With the clever?
Apparently not so much.
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8 Responses to “My world is PRETTY.”
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Oh thank Jeebus, I thought I was the only one.
This happened to me about 2 days ago, with the word BROKE.
I mean, I already KNOW I’m losing it, but further confirmation just isn’t good for the ego, ya know?
Hey, you just freaked me out with the word thing. And the
“freaky mental brouhaha just occurred in my unconscious cognitive process”
Well…is that even English?!?!?
Thanks for keepin’ me on the edge of insanity. My husband might not appreciate it much, but he knew I wasn’t all right when he married me!
I hate it when that happens.
p.s. I’m coming to see you next month.
This happens to me sometimes, too. The worst one was in 8th grade with the word “if”. No, really. IF. I could NOT remember how to spell it. I was like “I-V? Iv? That just doesn’t seem quite right…” Finally I turned to the boy next to me, a kid not known for his smarts (while I totally was) and said, “Um, how do you spell ‘if’?” Oh, the shame.
In other news, I want to email you but I can’t. I read your email, smiled and felt very loved, and when I returned later to respond, my email had died. It has been dead all week. Perhaps it will (maybe) resurrect this weekend. Here’s hoping.
You sure are cleverer.
Hee! Happens to all of us. Sometimes it’s a word that keeps recurring in the conversation and suddenly me or one of my daughters will say “STOP saying “wasps”! It doesn’t even sound like a word any more!” (Seriously, say it aloud a few times. Wasps. Wasps. Wasps. SEE?)
In the movie “As Good As It Gets”, the character played by Helen Hunt is trying to write a letter and is stymied by the word “conscience” She sounds it out: “Con. Science. THAT CAN’T BE RIGHT!” I roared, because I do that all the time.
(wasps)
Kristine: I hear you, babe. WORD.
Sarah: Hey, my pleasure, sistah. Tell the hubs “Yo, ‘sup?” for me, mm’kay?
Hey, Di, you’re coming to see me? Woo-hoo! Send me the details, woman! And YAY!
Kalki, it’s happened to me with the word “have” before, too. As in, “‘Do I haf to?’ Wait, that can’t be right…”
NSN Mom: Hee.
Nilbo: “Wasps”? No, see, that’s just weird. Stop freaking me out! Okay, I kid. Don’t even get me STARTED on what happens when I say the word “freckle” too many times. Seriously. Freckle. What is UP with that word?
And do you know, I have ALWAYS remembered how to spell conscience by saying “con-science” in my head as I spell it (as opposed to con-scious, which is another whole story altogether…), so I LOVED that scene.
Dammit. Now I want a CLEVER car.