Pride is a mortal sin, or a deadly sin, or a whatever sin, right? A few seconds pass… Ah, the answer is yes.

Well, I have that. The problem, though, is that it’s not for anything good like thinking I’m extremely good looking, overabundantly intelligent, or amazingly skilled. (Some friends reading this are laughing out-loud as they probably think I’m an arrogant [yet lovable] jerk. If only you all knew of the crippling self-doubt under the thin fascia of confidence).

But I digress.

I am prideful over something lame: spelling.

I’ve always been a fairly competent speller. I never won (nor entered) any spelling contests or anything, but I was always a big fan of creative writing assignments, and English was my best subject (which is why I chose to become an engineer, see? Because there’s so much literature-related coursework in mechanical engineering). I don’t think I’ve ever purposefully flaunted my spelling as an asset, but I’ve always been quietly prideful over it.

Alas, as the years between school and real life widen, and as technology becomes ever more ubiquitous in my life, my ability to spell correctly has been steadily decreasing. I used to… well in fact still do… say that “spell-check” is really just a typing check, not a spelling one. Nine times out of ten, your fingers will flub and you’ll leave out aspace or put a “t” ont he wrong word. This has nothing to do with spelling… right?

Let’s be honest with ourselves, though (this is where I start talking to myself): you’re really not sure about a lot of the words you type anymore, are you? They’re still a part of your vocabulary, you haven’t lost their usage, but does “conciliatory” have one L or two? (note: as proof, I typed it with two, looked it up, and am now trying to pass it off like I spelled it right the first time).

And this brings me to my PRIDE issue: If you have Firefox (and if you don’t, what, really, is wrong with you?) you are by now familiar with the little box on the right hand side that can be used for instant Google searches, ebay searches, and, in fact, dictionary searches. And, when I’m forced to look up a word I think I should know how to spell but then don’t (like conciliatory), I am so prideful that I then delete the word out of the search box, and switch it back to Google… just in case someone should come up behind me, see the word over my shoulder, and embarrass me horribly with, “You mean you don’t know how to spell ‘Thesaurus’? What are you, an idiot?!”

And yes, I still do that despite the fact that I am sitting alone in an empty temporary apartment, the address of which my friends don’t even know, yet.