Uncontrollable Laughter 1: Spellcheck mishaps

Technology is a great invention. It makes our daily lives easier, more convenient, and includes new ways to prevent us from embarrassing ourselves with bad spelling. At least that’s what my mom thought before a bad episode with spellcheck circulated around my family faster than the speed of light, and with it her pride and humility.

Spellcheck can be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, text messages can be sent in half the amount of time because typing words happens almost instantaneously. Sometimes you only have to type a letter or two before your phone comes up with the correct word, saving you the effort of typing in the remaining letters. On the contrary, some of the words it generates in response to the initial letters typed were not the words you had in mind, as was the case with a text my mom sent me a week ago.

Now, it’s important to know that this was not the first time my mom has sent me a text message with misspellings or incorrect words. In fact, it has dramatically increased this semester as my mom’s eyes are getting worse with age. She knows that she needs glasses, but doesn’t like wearing them, which adds to the humorous effect of this incident.

I was texting my mom back and forth about twenty different things this past week, since it was the week before thanksgiving break and tests, application deadlines, and just about anything else you could think of was due. In this conversation, my mom was attempting to tell me she made some changes to update my FAFSA for my study abroad scholarship application. Instead, this is what transpired:

While my mom was trying to say “I had to do something with FAFSA” what came out was “I had to do something with gags a fur.” Obviously, from that statement I had absolutely no idea what she was trying to say. After a few more text messages back and forth I called her to try and understand more. Both of us were dying laughing, most likely as a stress relief from all the requirements and heavy workload we were facing, but also at her spellcheck mistake which was far more incomprehensible than ever before.

To add to the humor, my mom’s initial response to how this happened was because she was “typing too fast”. My mom types text messages with one finger and at the pace of a snail, so I knew that was definitely not true. In fact, it was such a weak response that I quickly sent this picture around to my brothers and my uncle to get their take on her line of defense. Pretty soon, the whole family was involved and uncontrollably laughing as my mom’s final attempt to save her pride backfired.

Eventually the truth came out, and my mom admitted her incoherent messages were a result of the small letters on the screen, making it difficult for her to read the words. This of course led to my brother significantly enlarging her text font, creating a new joke where my brothers’ read the words on her phone by shouting them out loud and at an incredibly slow pace to account for the blown up letter proportions.

This laughter outbreak was a classic example of superiority theory. While my mom made a simple mistake, it provoked everyone around her to laugh and even to create new jokes and lines about her poor eyesight and resistance to wearing glasses. The contagious component of the spellcheck mishap spread like fire thanks to social media, group text messages, and my mom’s great sense of humor and ability to laugh at herself. The tensions of everyday life can be overwhelming, but thanks to technology and “gags a fur”, relief through laughter still prevails.