Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

If bad writing somehow becomes transferable, I fear my blog posts will go something like this…
See Richie. See Richie run. See Richie run screaming. See Richie run screaming with her hair on fire.

Or, maybe it would go something like this…

Like, see Richie, like run far. Like fast, you know. Like really, really fast.

But I think I'm more concerned about stupid things being contagious. These are just a few things that crossed my path recently and that no one caught but me…

•Like, did you know that famed composer Debussy's first name is Prelude? Me either.

•And apparently, "surprise" is spelled "suprise." I change it to surprise on the newspaper page, and the next time I read the page, it says suprise. I change it back to surprise. And, you know, you guessed it, SURPRISE! It's changed back to suprise. Wow, what a big surprise or suprise. I'd blame Gomer Pyle for his drawl on his famous, "Surprise, surprise, surprise…" line, but but these kids have no clue who that is.

(Years and years ago, I had a kid who was so convinced that a lot was one word, not two, that he added alot to the spell checker dictionary.)

•And then, of course, I got this little ditty the other day when we were working on feature writing in one of my classes. I told the kids to write a lead (first paragraph of a story) that "set the stage." Here was one of those attempts…

"Camping.The wonderful sense of the great outdoors. Getting to laugh and spend time with friends. Not to mention all the great wildlife. All the way from squirrels to giant black bears, mauling the face of Leaguetown's own Cooper Black."

I emailed it to my BFF and fellow teacher.

Her only reply: "Just one question. Were the squirrels mauling him, too? Those are some vicious squirrels!"

To which, I replied that I do believe I would rather be mauled by a pack of vicious squirrels than to continue reading all this bad writing.

See Richie. See pack of vicious squirrels. See squirrels maul Richie… The End