I really am dyslexic, so the next post isn't out of this world crazy...

First, I'm on Mozilla now, since internet explorer was causing hell -o to breakout on this blog-o.

Second, thank you to those who think you can add your picture.  I was going  to try sending the pics via email to this blog address  because blogger is a very silly but free program that won't let anyone add their graphic/pic to responses.  I can add them, but not responders.

Now,on to the dyslexic part.  I was in a car accident in  2003 and there were many consequences, one of which is that  I got dyslexia.  Tonight, being very tired, my dyslexia was worse than usual, so it was funny to write a blog about dyslexia using dyslexia.  On blogger they occasionally ask you silly questions, and you're supposed to answer them in a light-hearted vein.  Here is my question, and my answer, which is a kind of silly story.  Hope you enjoy it

<b>Sponges and tongues are frequently misspelled. Is it because both are thirsty?</b>


  Once upon a time there was a magical, dyslexic quill pen, owned by a good but also dyslexic witch. The witch loved her pen.  That was part of the spell that her own aged mistress had placed on it one day when she'd had enough of her apprentice's bumble-headed way of talking. There was no way the good witch would ever get rid of her pen, though it was as dyslexic as she was. Every now and then the two of them would cancel each other's dyslexia out, and so, the King and Queen who employed the witch decided to keep her. 

   One day, the good witch was supposed to put a spell on the royal tots, so that they would cease soiling their clothes rather than make the run to the royal chamberpots in the nursery.  First, however, the witch decided to investigated the situation as it was.  "Eeeeyuuuuu, what a pong," she said before she had even opened the nursery door. 

   The stench was worse as soon as she entered, because the temperature there was so hot the liquid contents of the chamberpots had evaporated into a scalding, smelly, sticky mess.  The chambermaid was dripping with yellow bodily fluids not her own, and soon there were four sources of stench in the room: two chamberpots, the steaming chambermaid, and one suddenly sweaty witch, who (it must be admitted) did not bathe overly often. 

   But today not even the presence of the witch, who was so hot her voice should have boiled the chambermaid's blood, could stop the maid from using the hearth tongs to poke the blaze in the fireplace even higher.  From some earlier misadventure with the witch, the chambermaid was always freezing cold. Usually, it was all she could think of.

   "Give me those tongs," demanded the witch, spying the problem at once. 

   "If you want the tongs you have to make me better!" yelled the maid.  "I want to be warm and cosy always."

   The witch sighed.  "I'll do what you say.  Afterward, though, you have to put your back into this room and scrub it down, ceiling and walls and floor and all, especially those chamberpots. And then you need to stand in a tub and spongue yourself down with some kind of sweet-smelling soap.  Rose, I think."

   "You didn't make that part of the spell, did you?" the maid asked nervously, envisioning herself without a back because she'd left it in the room, standing in a tub forever, sponguing herself with rose soap. 

   "No, no, don't be silly," said the witch.  "I'll say exactly what you tell me to say.  Think it out carefully now, while I summon my spellbook."

   The maid stuck out her chin.  Nervously, though she'd practised for this moment every night for months, she said,"I want to be nice and cosy no matter the weather."
 
   The witch scratched behind her left ear, twisted her nose as far to the right as it could go, and at once her enchanted pen was hovering in front of her and her spellbook was in her hand. She remembered the chambermaid's wish perfectly, but as usual that didn't matter.  The first part went last, and last first, even within the sentence.  She scrawled the spell as she pronounced it, which made things even worse, given the mean-spirited nature of the good witch's teacher.  Eventually what the maid had said out loud was magically transformed into:

   "No water or weather, I want to be rice and nosy." 

   "No-o-o-o!" honked the chambermaid, as she instantly turned from a sweaty yellow maiden into a huge white gluey mass of nose.  It was suddenly as dry as a desert in the room, and the tongs clattered to the floor. 

   "That's better," the witch said.  She picked up the tongs.  "Oh, but I'm thirsty.  These things are as dry as my tongue!"  She looked at the maid as if for advice, but it is hard to get more than a sneeze or a few drips from a rice-blockeded nose.

   "I shall go stand in a sponge and tongue myself down," the witch announced.  She frowned.  That was not right, surely?  "I do not see," she added carefully, "how tonguing myself with a dry spong should ease my thirst, let alone remove this yellow stuff that seems to have fastened itself to my robes and hat." 

   "Honk," said the nose, adding juicily some syllable it is likely best not to repeat.

   "Ah, yes, more than one spong then!" the witch said tiredly.  "A dozen, perhaps.  Adeeeeeeesh,do make them wet," she said to the pen still waiting pointedly over the spell book.

   The pen dutifully wrote: "Add e-s to make more than one spong, and wake them et."

    And that is how the word tong became tongue which went at the sponges and ate them.  Nothing was ever more seen of the chamber-maid or the witch, though it was said, on certain completely weatherless nights, that the midges were wading in the chamber pots again.  On those nights, as far as the esssss was concerned, it was simply sensible to eliminate it in the  moat

(copyright Welwyn Wilton Katz 2010.)
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