I Have Seen the Future, and It Is Misspelled

But not just misspelled. Butchered.

I teach at a giant university where, as I've said here before, there's a lot of bragging and hornblowing about how only the whip-smartest students are accepted. Why, just pick up one of our brochures and look at them! All toothy smiles and Abercrombie and Fitch clone-wear and armloads of textbooks to make them even smarter!

Now, walk with me, won't you, into the dark abyss that is their true smarts. I won't deny it: I do have some wonderfully talented students. Students whose papers I hide in the middle of the pile so they can pop up and save me from the inferior ones. Like a delicious grape popsicle appearing in between mouthfuls of raw liver. I love those students. They have mercifully kept me from many drunken hours.

Then there are the idiots.

Here are 3 examples of recent weeks:

1. "My father keeps the drawing I did in first grade on the top shelf of his arm wall." (Armoir.) ((A senior writing major wrote this.))

2. "The cat was paroled up on the window sill." (I can only guess she was trying to say "curled" up on the window sill. But how does one get from "curled" to "paroled." Or maybe I'm wrong. The cat committed a crime, went to kitty prison, and the window sill is the cat equivalent of Martha Stewart's ankle bracelet.)

3. My current favorite: "Why do we even need to talk about Hitler anymore now that his reign of tenor has ended?" (Written by a junior in college, this sentence was wrong on so many levels, that when I read it, my head imploded and hung down on my chest like a melting Dali clock. It took heroic efforts to revive me.)

But seriously, didn't you hate it when Adolph belted out a tune? Even his friends wouldn't tell him he sucked.