A Confession

As many of you regular readers know, my wonderful wife (who I would never intentionally offend, though I’ve managed to do so several times in our long, near-perfect marriage) is NOT a big fan of my blog. (Understatement.)

She does, however, support me in my attempts to become a published author. She is an English major and a perfectionist. I am an English major, but one for whom “close enough” works just fine.

I am comfortable with writing that sounds OK even if, strictly speaking, it isn’t “correct.” She, on the other hand, has little patience for blatant misuse of the English language.

This morning she walked into our “school room” (so named because this extra bedroom in our house was set up 20 years ago as a place where she could home-school our two daughters—more on that another time) which houses our home office and computer. She found me gleefully typing away on a blog comment defending my use of the pseudo word “sillibance.”

Her bemused tolerance at my silliness turned into less-than-tolerant pique when she saw the comment from Christina in which our daughter seemed to acquiesce and agree that “sillibance” might be a legitimate word.

Now remember, Carol educated Christina. For me, her father, to deceive her into thinking that a made-up word was legitimate would be... well, dishonest!

Remember the old song by The Association called “Windy?” One line from that song’s lyrics always brings to mind my wife. The line goes:

And Windy has stormy eyes,
That flash at the sound of lies...

One thing Carol cannot stand is dishonesty.

She looked at me with that one-raised-eyebrow look and asked, “So, are you not going to admit that you’re stupid and just misspelled the word?”

My arguments that it was all in fun, tongue in cheek, etc., fell on deaf ears. I even tried, “Oh, Christina knows ‘sillibance’ isn’t a real word. She’s just going along with the joke.” Didn’t work.

As the tee-shirt slogan says, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t NOBODY happy!”

So, to all of you (or maybe both of you) faithful readers, here’s my confession: I wanted to use the word “sibilance.” I had a “senior moment” when I wasn’t sure if the word was “sibilance” or “sillibance,” so I Googled “sllibance” and found a bunch (7) of listings and, being in a hurry to post the comment, I used it.

Mea culpa! Then, when (inevitably) my error was gleefully pointed out by Karyn “the foil” Lyndon (Thanks a LOT, Karyn!), I tried to cover up my ignorance.

Confession is supposed to be good for the soul. I’m not sure.

I was feeling a lot more gleeful when I was (successfully, I thought) defending my ignorance with bluster and obfuscation.

(Another quote: "If you're right, pound the facts. If you're wrong, pound the table.")

But Carol is happier. She’d much rather that all of my readers think her husband to be addle-headed or ignorant than dishonest!