In Which I Express Surprising Hatred for Common Things

The alphabet pisses me off.

I realize that this statement might need a little more explanation than most of my random declarations, so first, some background.

I have kind of an arms-length relationship with reality. The world that exists in my head is a nifty place, full of well-formed theories and concepts that aren’t sullied by all that nastiness that floats around the real world. Try sending me grocery shopping for a good example of this. You want me to get eggs and milk. Those are what I consider ‘implementation details’. In my head I’m going to the store to get ‘food’. So when I come back with a sandwich no one should be surprised. That’s if I even manage to make it to the store without forgetting where I’m going and autopiloting to work.

Concepts are obviously a big deal to me, so things get a little sticky when certain concepts are implemented poorly in reality. For example, the horror that is the English alphabet. See, an alphabet is supposed to be a way to break down phonetic components of language to allow for transcription. The English alphabet technically does this, but that’s like saying that a drunk guy pissing on your lawn is fulfilling the responsibilities of a sprinkler system.

The letter C is a great example. It makes a sound like K or sometimes, for no appreciable reason, it sounds like S.

So why in the name of all that’s holy do we have the letter C at all? USE K OR S DAMNIT!

I get angry thinking about vowel ambiguity and the ‘silent e’ pisses me off to no fucking end. I remember very little of my childhood, but I know I learned to read pretty early, so I think that might have spared my kindergarten teacher being yelled at by a swearing five year old about conceptual clarity. Since then, I never really gave it much thought except when I’d typo an ill-constructed word and the rage would briefly flare back up. But now that we have two kids I’ve had to teach Daughter this abomination and I’ll be taking Son through it soon. When I was teaching Daughter phonics, I’d have to stop and explain that C says Kuh or Ess because somewhere along the line an idiot was put in charge of something that they shouldn’t have been.

I use that as an important life-lesson for her.

She’ll have fun with her teachers.

So will I.