10-31-19

I wake up thinking about the strangest things. Usually, I tell Chad about them and he laughs and shakes his head. I believe he thinks I am crazy, lol. Most days I forget all about what was running through my mind by the time I brush my teeth. Other times, the thought lingers all day, and I just think and think on it. Today was one of those days. When I got up this morning I was thinking about an old rhyme I learned in elementary school, “I before E except after C.” I know, it is completely off the wall, but there it was, my craziness in all its glory. I remember not being the best speller as a child, and this little tip got me through some tight spots while writing papers, even in my high school years. There is no way I would know how to spell receive or receipt without first saying that little ditty in my head even to this day. I have to say this has been a wonderful tool, but the older I get the more instances come up that I find this rule doesn’t always apply. What about neighbor or their? So I decided to look up how many words don’t follow this cute little jingle. I was astonished to find that there are only 44 words that actually follow this rule and there are 923 words that break it! But hold on to your seats ya’ll, that’s not all! If you count all the forms of each of those law breaking words, you get at least 6,483 new violators. Dude, I’m not making this up, go look it up for yourselves! I think the little tune should have been, “I before E except after C with these 44 words, but every other word known to man kind, it is reverse.” At first glance, you would think the rhyme that was told to me was a blatant lie, but it served a great purpose when I had the vocabulary of a 10 year old. It is kind of a half-truth I guess. I mean, it is 0.6741228742148% true. (A big thank you to Ms. Nickerson for teaching me how to calculate that.) I know what you are thinking about now, “Where is she going with all this nonsense?” The point is, this half-truth was harmless, but there are some half-truth’s that can lead people down the wrong path or confuse them at the least. The only way we, as followers of Christ, can keep from being led a stray is to read all of the Word for ourselves. To look it up with our eyes wide open and our hearts ready to receive the Truth, because I am telling you, there is nothing else in this world that will ever be 100% accurate besides the beautiful Word of the Father. I hope you all have a very blessed day.