Sure, I publish this magazine, but my real job is to sell the advertising that you see within its pages. That's what I do best. Every month, I am also called upon to write this column — 500 words of what's important to me at the time. Coming up with 500 words should be an easy task, but sometimes I get stumped on simply spelling some of those words.
I'm almost 60 years old, and I find myself going back to my elementary-school rhymes to help me get through the assignment. I always thought it unusual that some days in class, we were taught how to sing as we learned our lessons for the day. We had an English teacher who probably was a frustrated music instructor — when it was time to learn the alphabet, she would sing it to us. I never knew why. There it was above the chalkboard in the front of the class. I could just look up and memorize it, right?
Fast-forward 50 years, and I am still humming the words to that song because I tend to get stumped on some of those letters and where they belong in a word. If it weren't for that song, I would have to leave out the letters "G" and "H" in words like "tough" or "though." For some reason, I think that the "G" follows the "H." If you ever come into my office and hear me humming, just walk the other way.
That brings me back to this column as I recite the "I before E" rhyme. I can never get it right. I know there are some words that don't follow this protocol. "I" should come before "E" except after "C," but when it comes to the word "weigh," you can throw that rhyme out the window.
In addition to writing this column — and selling ads — some of my days are set aside for decisions like setting the deadline for selling advertising and delivering all of our files to the printer. Every month we choose dates to print, but some of those months have 30 days and, you guessed it, another rhyme and some more humming. If 30 days has September, should we go to the printer on a Monday or perhaps Tuesday? There isn't a month that goes by that I am not singing that song, and if you hear me singing it louder than usual, just walk the other way because one of those months has 28 or sometimes 29 days.
