Mark no like spelling

Mark is terrible at spelling, a fact he readily (and proudly) admits.

"Who cares," he says, waving his hands dismissively at me. "No one cares about spelling anyway."

"Uh, I do," I always remind him. "I'm a writer, remember? Good spelling pays the bills around here!"

But it doesn't matter. Mark's head is completely filled with more important things--sports stats, and video game strategies, future inventions. There's no room for words in there.

I don't think my expectations of him are unreasonable. At a bare minimum, he should be able to spell certain words he sees every day, like his name or chronic autoimmune diseases that affect him, for example. But even here, my dear son disagrees with me.

"Hey Mom," he called out the other day. "How do you spell diabetes?"

I answered as I always do.

"Sound it out," I said.

"D-I-B..." he started. "Um...E-E-T-E-E-S?"

I shook my head and sighed. Mark replied with his dismissive hand wave.

"Whatever," he told me, scribbling his made-up word. "Doesn't matter."

"It does matter, Mark," I said. "Come on, how many times a day do you write diabetes?"

"None," he told me. Then I realized he was probably right about that, and changed my tact.

"OK, well, you should at least spell things like your name right."

"I can," he said. "M-A-R-K D-A-Y-I-N-E-L-L-E--"

"Wait!" I interrupted. "Did you just spell your middle name wrong?"

"No," he snorted, then thought for a moment and asked, "How do you spell it?"

"D-A-N-I-E-L," I said.

"Whatever," he repeated. "You just say that because you have an easy middle name. A-N-N. I could spell my name if it was short like that, too."

"Doesn't matter if it's short, you should still be able to spell your own name!" I said.

"Who uses their middle name anyway?" he asked. He stopped for a moment, thinking about his adoption day, when he wanted to re-name himself after the cat.

The social worker said that some kids like to change their names at adoption, to reflect their new beginning. When I asked Mark if he wanted to do that, he'd immediately said yes--he wanted to name himself after the cat.

I bargained him down to changing just his middle name. I thought it was cute, but my friend Kelley disagreed.

"You can't name him after the CAT!" she yelled at me.

"Why not?" I asked. "It's just his middle name."

But Kelley won, pointing out that Mark was five years old, and maybe not in his prime decision-making years. So instead, he kept his original middle name, a name he still can't spell.

"So you wish your middle name was Ann?" I asked him now.

"Well, not Ann," he admitted. "But something easy. Like Frankie. F-R-A-N-K..."

He paused, staring into space. I sighed again.

"Really?" I asked. "You see it on his collar every day, and you can't spell Frankie?"

"...Y," he said. "F-R-A-N-K-Y. Right?"

"Mark," I said, shaking my head. "Thank God your name isn't something complicated like Benjamin or Benedict. Or Bartholomew. At least you can spell your first name right."

"Yup, it's easy," he agreed. "M-A-R-C."

I turned my head to look at him. He was smiling, a grin lighting up his face. He may not be a good speller, but he's got a wicked sense of humor.

"Yes, M-A-R-C," I said. "That's close enough."

And for the record, Mark hasn't changed that much since he was five. He'd still name himself after a cat today, if the name "Fernando" wasn't so long.