Spelling Lessons
If you have a Judeo-Germanic jawbreaker of a name like “Jonathan Boorstein,” you can expect to be misspelled as well as mispronounced.
Nevertheless, it did give me a turn when an employer once sent a subscription package addressed to “J. Boorst.” That, however, didn’t come close to the gay discount club mailing to “Jonathan Boobtein.”
Of course, neither is quite up there with the classic misspelling my father, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Maccabae Boorstein, used to see on the mailing label of a medical supplies catalog. For some reason, the company liked to address him as Dr. Macabre Beerstein.
Dad was not amused. Nor was he amused by his children trying to imagine what a macabre beerstein might look like.
He didn’t just throw out those catalogs, he tore them up first. Most of us who get misspelled aren’t quite so emotionally involved-but we don’t order, either.
I may occasionally expect to see my name misspelled. Even so, I order from the catalogs that get it right.
After all, what’s spell check for?
