A Story of Tragic Tragedy

For Reference, first read:

http://mabelogic.blogspot.com/2006/06/to-narcissus.html

Once upon a time,

there was a young girl with some watermelon in her hand. Uncertain what it was meant for, she decided to take her picture with it.

Most of her life had been that way, uncertain and confused, but she had learned to become accustomed to it. As a woman, she was of course afflicited with vanity, but of a new sort. Rather than considering herself glamorous, she considered herself a good writer, and thought she enjoyed it. And so it went on for years, but one day one of her stories came across the desk of then Vice President Al Gore, who used the letter as inspiration for HTML, the basic computer language upon which he based his invention, the Internet. It was later discovered that what he had thought was a stolen beta version of software programming was simply a story about the childhood of one nameless Mary Beth Baker, and authored by the same in a dialect intended to be English, but due to her spelling, was untranslatable.

When George W. Bush became president, he was shown this letter, and while he was able to read more of it than most people, such as the word "strategery," the horrid spelling of the letter prompted him to start a government program entitled "No Two Childs Left Aside," intended to improve schooling, particularly in the areas of reading and writing.

But we digress. Mary struggled to change her spelling capabilities and entered several spelling bees in her hometown. After her local school banned them from the public due to embarassment, Mary sought to continue her life, but her confusion continued her life with her. She chose a man's name at Confirmation, and thought that her first name was Marybeth, and that she too would one day be the subject of a great play in the Shakesperean fashion. To become well known in the world of literature she prided herself on stories--fictitious stories--of guys who drove trucks and lived in dark basements.

She began a series of short stories which exemplify her intellectual state at this time. Here is one such inspirational story for young children, which she is seeking to have published:

So far, Mary hadn't really hurt anyone. She had accidentally helped to invent the Internet, improve public schools, prevent the president from feeling all alone with no one to identify with, and inspire many young Americans with tales of... well, just tales.

But then she went to college.

At first she felt lost and confused--more than usual--but then one of her new friends proved to her, beyond a doubt, that the word convent did not contain a double consonant such as "ll" or the letter "g" as in "ege." Then her surroundings began to make sense and take shape, and she became happy, and her spelling improved after she was told not to look at the papers the nuns wrote anymore (from whence she had drawn a sense of comfort). She joined the choir and sang tenor in the alto section.

Two years passed, and things were looking up. The reform seemed almost complete. Then it happened.

She thumbed a ride west to go to the wedding of a friend, and was picked up by a dashing young man with a prestigious name. His last name was German and meant "ruler of people," while his first name meant "Given by God." (The Divine Right of Kings when you put the two together.) He lived in a tidy and sunny apartment with pickled nothing and had a regal roomate. He hired a couple of young men to do his dishes and he opened the windows to allow the fresh breeze to fill his lungs with the goodness of Mother Nature.

Traveling west with a tall Texan at the wheel, Mary was overwhelmed and became uncertain of herself. When she heard the Prayers of the Faithful read in a strong manly voice at the wedding she grew more perplexed and was awed by the exquisite and beautiful works of art her driver played on the way back home, and impressed by the way he stopped the music when she wished to talk on the phone. Most of all, she admired the way he could drive down the road while talking with a passenger and looking them in the eye, or while he was sleeping.

Mary could not stand this, she could not stand this at all, because, aside from everything else, this guy she rode with could....

...spell words correctly.

She wanted to make a good impression; she was after all reforming and much better than her days in HTML. But when it was time to part, she lost it. She didn't see him around, so she wrote him a note.

A note that would change lives.

It looked right to her. But to the rest of the world, it was oh so obvious, like the extra "e" in the word "acknowledg(e)ments" in the front of the library copy of my thesis. According to a message received by the Academy News on June 22, 2006, that was the end of Mary Baker:

"We regret to inform you that Mary Elizabeth Baker, a.k.a. entirely too many other things to mention here, whose name is not necessarily stupid although it is decidedly boring, has died. She died of embarrassment at precisely 4:08 p.m. on Thursday, June 22. Although nothing certain can be said regarding her death at this time, the authorities have reason to believe she died of embarrassment over the misspelling of a name."

P.S. You realize, of course, that I am quite serious.