First, look at this picture. Many of you have seen this picture and know what it is. If you have never seen this picture look closely because what you see at first may not be what others see.
Now, look at the picture of the Postal Service logo, about 99.9999999999999999999% of the public will look at it and say, “Oh that is an eagle” and the discussion would be over.
Well, about two years ago if anyone asked me what that picture was I would say, “It looks like a man with a big pointy nose with his right foot forward and his left leg is gimpy and he has some white thing sticking out of his butt.” I never really paid attention to the white thing or the gimpy leg but I did think it was strange to have a guy with a huge head and a pointy nose as the logo for the United States Postal Service. Sometime later I came across this picture again and I said to myself, “Self, what the heck is that thing really? It can’t be some guy with a pointy nose, that would be retarded… wait a second, I am such a moron.” This is where I use the ball of my hand to hit my head while saying, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
The second situation happened about three years ago when I was eating dinner at my parent’s house. I don’t remember if this was a special occasion dinner but it may have been. There is usually a lot of noise when we are together because as a whole we, the J family, have very lively personalities. Our dinner was either spaghetti and pizza or steak and fries, which are our staple family dinners. Throw in a salad into either one of those choices and we are set. After eating, I wanted to proclaim my physical satisfaction of the wonderful meal to whom ever was listening. I thought to myself, “Self, what should I say to describe my satisfaction? Let me see. How about ‘I feel stuffed!’ No, that is so old fashioned. How about ‘Me belly really big. You makum good food.’ No, to caveman-ish. How about I think of a big word—one that I never use. Oh wait I know…” Here is my prize winning phrase, “Oh man, I am famished!” Now before I go on lets take a look at what the word famished means. According to dictionary.com the word means- extremely hungry: to be famished after a hike; famished, homeless multitudes. —Synonyms See HUNGRY. My younger brother was sitting next to me when I said that and he had a strange look on his face. Keep in mind that I said this in the midst of about three conversations, so lucky for me not many people heard. My big younger brother started to laugh at me so I figured that I must have used the word wrong. For some reason I thought it was a synonym for full. I guess I was wrong.
Third and least of all. While at work about two weeks ago, I was writing a Letter of Instruction for one of our clients in which I wrote the word receipt. I spelled it reciept and since I was typing in Word the red squiggly line showed up. Therefore, I right clicked the word and the spell check came up with the correct spelling of receipt. I made a mental note that the e comes before the i. Later in the day, as I was writing a follow-up project for myself, I wrote the word receive and I noticed that receive is spelled similar to the word receipt. And all of a sudden the phrase came to me “I before E except after C.” Holy Cow! I have never seen this rule applied until this one moment. I was amazed; I could finally say I understand this rule now and I was amazed that it took me twenty-seven years to figure it out. Good Job Spencer!
