Spelling RG Bee

My name, first and last, is ten letters. Ten. Even the most simple-minded person can remember a string of ten letters with five minutes of rehearsal. Unfortunately, Fred is unable to do this. Even with two and a half years of rehearsal.

The other day, I received a check in the mail from Fred. The first thing that caught my eye was the fact that my name was misspelled on the envelope. I figured it was just a fluke, but no. The check had the same misspelling.

We dated for two and a half fucking years and he never bothered to learn how to spell my fucking name. Not only did he not bother to learn it, he must have actively fought learning it. He had emailed me the day before sending the check and apparently did not notice the spelling of my last name in my email address. Seriously, what the fuck? You have to spell my name correctly to even email me! Furthermore, he has seen my name written out a million times and yet, somehow the ten letters did not string together in his head.

Although, this honestly shouldn't surprise me. This was the same guy who could not spell his own sister's first name. While trying to address a card to her, I asked Fred whether she spelled her name with an "e" or an "i" and Fred drew a blank (I ended up having him call his mother). I suppose that if after 18 years of his sister's life, he could not learn to spell her (very basic and very common) first name, then I really shouldn't have expected him to figure out my last name without at least 50 years' practice (I thank God every single day that he will not have the opportunity to practice my name for 50 years).

So, remember kids: pay attention in school. Misspellings are adorable when you're six, but when you're twenty-six, it's just fucking pathetic. Now I am stuck with a check that the bank most likely won't cash because someone is a fucking retard.

Nice going, douche.

Say my name

I’m not going to lie – it kind of pisses me off when a guy I am dating cannot pronounce and spell my name correctly. I understand that I do not have the most common last name, but after 3 months of going out with me, he should really figure it out!

All it takes is paying attention to my outgoing voicemail message, calling me at work, looking at my e-mail address, reading my business card or JUST ASKING! Not that hard.

Even worse than someone not knowing how to spell my name is someone not knowing how to spell his own. I briefly dated a guy (same one who lied about where he went to school) whose middle name was Michael. He was born with this name, so the argument that it was new cannot be made. He was also in his 20s and not (to the best of my knowledge) retarded.

One day, he saw the name "Michael" written out somewhere and asked "oh, is that really how you spell it?" Um, yeah Dude.

I asked what other way he thought it was spelled. Apparently he got the "e" and the "a" mixed-up. At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe his parents are bad spellers and named him "***** Micheal", so I had him check his license. Sure enough, "***** Michael."

I honestly don’t know how he had gotten through life that long without knowing how to spell his own name. I mean, isn’t this something everyone knows how to do by kindergarten? Furthermore, you'd think he would have seen it SOMEWHERE before he reached his twenties.

It still blows my mind that he managed to not know how to spell "Michael" despite it being on his driver’s license, birth certificate, high school diploma, tax forms, voter registration, bank account and basically EVERYWHERE else. Dumbass.

He was a skater boy

I like to think of dating as making successive approximations toward my ideal partner. With each guy I date, I am able to find new qualities which I will seek or avoid in future partners. Each time I date a new person, I am closer to having found the right one. I have a better idea each time around of what characteristics I want, and of those, which are the most important. Ergo, my last boyfriend was closer to what I want than the one before him, who was closer than the one before him, and so on down the chain. Following this logic, boyfriend zero would be the one who is least like the person I would like to end up with.

It was spring of 1996, the year when the grunge era was coming to a close and the skater trend was in full swing. This was before the time when skaters had blue hair and were outcasts in high school. Before Avril Lavigne-ish girls wearing tank tops with ties. Before skaters became a elitist clique of the least elite people imaginable. No, this was the time when it was actually cool to wear over-sized elephant-esque clothing from Pacific Sunwear (yes, this was even before it became Pac-Sun).

I, however, was not cool. I did not wear baggy clothes from PS, or have hemp jewelry, a skateboard or a wallet on a chain. I was 12 years old, and had a mother who did not let me dress like a derelict. I wore clothes that were not especially trendy, and fit me well. This didn't bother me much though because, I was in all GT classes, and none of the other nerds in my classes were particularly cool either.

Well, you can imagine my surprise when the cool new skater kid who was the object of desire of every girl in the school started passing notes to me in home economics (this is totally like 2nd base or something). Boyfriend Zero was too cool for school. He was in remedial classes, yet thought he was smarter than everyone around him (which I guess may have been the case with the crowd he hung with), he had an entire wardrobe from PS, and he used new slang words which I to this day, can not figure out. His friends would skateboard to Taco Bell and buy a small soda, then get like 20 refills (what rebels), and he was allowed to watch MTV. He was unlike the nerds that I had been around before. He put his own coolness above having any sort of real goals. He didn't participate in sports or other after school activities like I did. His after school activities consisted of skateboarding, Taco Bell, and hanging out. He was totally righteous, dude!

Things progressed in the typical middle school fashion, and pretty soon, we were dating. This meant that we went to the mall with four other friends (who were dating each other too), held hands a few times, passed notes to each other, bragged about dating each other to everyone in school, and he gave me daffodils which he picked out of his neighbor's yard on the way to the bus stop (I still am not sure if I find this to be endearing enough to over-look the fact that he destroyed someone's meticulously groomed garden). We were the most enviable middle school couple of the time.

Of course, these things don't last forever, and we had our falling out a few weeks later when I did not want to kiss him. I wasn't one of those middle school sluts who ran around kissing people. I had morals, dammit! Things ended. So, I went back to my schoolwork, ballet and equestrian lessons. He moved on to the class whore, because, she was willing to make out with him (I heard that she ended up getting pregnant in high school) also, she had a brother who was two years older and a skater. Who wouldn't want an in with such an awesome dude? Unfortunately, my older sister was about as cool as I was, so I guess I never had that advantage. We didn't really have any mutual friends, as our collective group of friends broke up over our break-up (it was middle school). I saw him around school a little bit, but we didn't talk much. He moved away the next year and went to a different middle school. After that, I lost track of him entirely.

That is, until the miracle of the internet let me take one last look at him. I stumbled across (ok, I searched his name on Stalkerati and found) his MySpace page. First of all, who my age has a MySpace page? Totally righteous dudes, duh! The information on there was surprising to read because, well, it is not surprising at all. It was as if he had written it 10 years ago (perhaps his new school did not offer English classes). His picture showed him in all his skater glory. He is still in his Pac Sun clothes, hemp necklace, and Vans. He has no real hobbies worth mentioning, other than skateboarding and hanging out with his friends. He still has no drive to do the things which are important to people like me (like getting a job).

I guess the point of all this is that I wouldn't kiss Boyfriend Zero ten years ago, and I sure as hell wouldn't kiss him now.