Spell check won't ruin my anniversary column

The moment you’ve waited for. The annual October event when I waste valuable column space to wonder out loud why any of you would ever read the ramblings of a hopeless amateur writer. I call it my anniversary column, and it is the fifth such one I have penned. Actually I use a computer so there is no pen involved, but you get the gist.

My annual admission that I drive English teachers crazy. I butcher proper grammar, places periods after sentence fragments, and invent words at times. Words such as “gonna, gotta, kinda, sorta, prongy, fella, gigantor, vocabularial, and unancientness” have appeared in at least one of my columns in 2008 alone. My computer bleeds red underlinings every time I type the aforementioned words, like it just now did when I wrote “underlinings.”

And ever since partnering up with a gent from Murphy, N.C. on a mission trip, I have used and overused the term “bein’s how” in my columns quite often.

Despite all this, I am allowed to continue. And even more puzzling, a number of you- the reading public- have encouraged me to continue rambling.

While transporting one of my kids from house to house on Halloween night a while back, a nice lady recognized me from my picture in the paper and thanked me for “making an old lady’s day each Sunday.” I was so stunned and blush-faced that I forgot to ask for some candy, though my son grabbed half a bag-full during the conversation.

And then there was the time a nice lady in Wal-Mart approached me and said something like, “Hello, please don’t think I’m a crazy person. You don’t know me but I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate what you write in the paper.” She had me at hello. But I gotta wonder if she might be a little crazy- not because she approached me in a crowd, but because she claimed to actually read what I write every week.

Recently at a high school football game, I felt a tap on my shoulder and a lady two rows back asked me if I was “the guy who wrote in the paper.” When I nodded, she began a one-way conversation that lasted about thirty seconds, none of which I heard because she commenced at the same moment the band cranked up as the football team stormed the sidelines for the opening kickoff. I got the feeling her words were complimentary because she kept smiling as her lips moved. So I nodded occasionally and smiled back and thanked her when the band stopped. She may have told me to go jump in a lake, but I’ll take whatever she said as encouragement.

Every year I remind you this much. I don’t write for the newspaper. I write for the people who read it. I write for the people who read my blog and for those who get my column by email. I’ll admit I’m slightly embarrassed when one of you stops me and tells me to keep it up. Frankly I don’t know exactly what it is I am doing that makes people laugh or cry or whatever. But bein’s how some of you dare to encourage me, I’m gonna keep on keepin’ on. No matter how much my computer’s spell check hates me.