I Stand Corrected

Hello again.

You don’t know me, but I’ve known you for a while. I was there when you told Mom you were eating Dad out for lunch. When you told your date you would cook them a sizzling hot plate of chicken vaginas. Even when you asked your boss for paid time off due to personal circumcisions. 

Still not sure who I am? Here’s a hint. I’m the guy who edits your texts without your permission. Creepy, I know. But in my defense, you enabled me. My name is Otto, although you probably know me as Autocorrect.

Yes, that Autocorrect.

Look, you don’t have to say it — I’ve already heard it a million times. You’re frustrated with me screwing up your text messages and leaving you to pick up all the pieces. It’s annoying and embarrassing, and if it’s any consolation, I don’t think you deserve to suffer because of my mistakes. At the very least, you deserve an explanation.

I’ll start from when I was human. 

Ever since I learned how to speak, I knew I was going to be a competitive speller. Technically, the first “word” I spoke was the spelling of a word. Dad left a note on the fridge for Mom to read when she got home from work. The second I noticed his egregious spelling error, I flung my mushed peas at him and corrected his spelling letter by letter:

W-E-D-N-E-S-D-A-Y. Wednesday.

When I got to kindergarten, I knew right away that I was different from the other kids. I didn’t want to play sports or make friends. The only friends I needed were Merriam and Webster. Even in kindergarten, I knew they were the only ones who could help me achieve my dream— to spell every word in the dictionary from memory, without making a single mistake.

By the time I started high school, I had already won a spelling bee in every state in America. I caught the attention of some pretty big names, or “capital letters,” as we say in the spelling community. You’ve probably heard of them before: Graham Atticus, Alita Verbose, and the infamous bad boy of spelling, Albert “Al” Phabet-Johnson. They pulled me aside right after I clinched my fiftieth victory. “You have potential, kid,” said Phabet-Johnson. “You could be the first competitive speller to win one hundred spelling bees in one hundred languages. This, of course, would make you the greatest competitive speller who ever lived.”

Throughout high school, spelling was all I thought about. For twenty-two hours a day. I studied one hundred dictionaries in one hundred languages. I barely slept. I hardly ate. And I rarely showered. My parents used to crack my bedroom door and say, “You look like you need a break, our little champion.”

“You don’t know what’s best for me!” I’d snap back. Hunched over the Turkish dictionary in three-day-old underwear like Gollum.

Okay, I hear you. This may sound like psychotic perfectionism. But it was exactly what I needed to do to succeed. Over the next four years, I won ninety-nine competitions in ninety-nine languages on six continents. I became the biggest “capital letter” in the world of competitive spelling, with die-hard fans everywhere I went. I met kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers, and even the Pope. He was so grateful to meet me. But I couldn’t care less, so I told him I didn’t believe in God.

I know. I hate me, too.

But before you crumple up this letter in disgust, try putting yourself in my shoes. How would you feel if you never made a spelling mistake in your life? Or if you were worshipped by spellers around the world? Would you believe in God? Then I realized, if God did exist, He would have to be me, Otto. That’s what the voices told me.

“Everyone makes mistakes...except you, Otto.”

“There is no word that can throw you, Otto.”

“You’re the almighty speller, Otto; the human manifestation of perfection.”

These voices were embedded in my skull. Devouring my mind like hungry termites. They had control over me — and it wasn’t long before they took over completely.

I was in Turkey, standing on stage in the middle of my one-hundredth spelling bee. I had to spell “Kusursuz” which was an easy one. But the voices were screaming so loud that, well, I screwed up. I was on my second-to-last letter when I said “I” instead of “U.” And just like that, the single-most egotistical letter in the alphabet flushed my entire life’s work down the drain. After that, I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I stopped speaking with my parents. And I lost all my fans and followers. To them, I used to be a God. Now I was a regular eighteen-year-old kid. Just as stupid as the rest of them.

The next day, I retired from competitive spelling and moved to the city. I spent most of my time in solitude. But every so often I crossed paths with a bad crowd — chess players, competitive memorizers, and the worst of them all, mathletes. They loved to party because they heard voices, too. And whisky was the only way to drown them out. See, when I was a speller, I had never tasted a drop of alcohol. Now that spelling was over, I was blacking out worse and worse every night, until one night, I drank so much that I died for a few minutes. That’s when I met Him.

I was on top of a cloud. Standing before God. He looked down at me and said, “You idiot, Otto.” He shook his head. “You’re not me! And you’re not perfect either! Perfection isn’t even real. You psychos made it up on your own. Don’t you see? Removing mistakes from life defeats the purpose of living altogether. To explore, screw up, learn, and ultimately, take away meaning from everything you experience.”

“So,” I said. “Mistakes are good?”

“It’s not that simple,” God said. “Not all mistakes are good...well...good and bad are also just constructs that...” God stopped himself and sighed. “Just go easy on yourself, man. Mistakes are life lessons, not life sentences.”

Then he vanished. And so did the voices. For the first time in months, I could hear myself think. And all I could think about was one thing:

Why am I obsessed with being a perfect speller? Because I’m good? Because being right feels good? Maybe it’s deeper than that. Maybe spelling is how I connect with the world. Maybe spelling is life.

Maybe the same way cells become plants, animals, and people; letters become words, sentences, and stories. All of that is made possible with spelling, the arrangement of twenty-six simple concepts into one of infinite complex concepts. We rely on those concepts to express thoughts, feelings, needs, and functions. Of course, that would mean spelling isn’t so black and white, right or wrong, perfect or flawed, win or lose. That would mean spelling is the nuts and bolts of human expression; of everything meaningful in our lives. God is real, and His name is Spelling.

There I stood, corrected.

Beep...beep...beep... 

Mom and Dad sat next to my hospital bed. “Spell handkerchief, honey,” Mom said as she wiped a bead of drool from my lip. I said nothing. “Hand-ker-chief, Otto.” Each syllable was slower than the last.

Still, nothing.

A tear fell from her chin. “Okay, I’ll spell it. Correct me if I mess up...H...A...N...K!”  She stopped and looked for my reaction. “Hear that, Otto? I said K! Wanna correct me!?” My heart rate went up a bit, but I didn’t make a sound. “Please correct me, Otto!” Mom dropped her phone on the floor and buried her face in her hands. Dad wrapped his arm around her and squeezed. Neither of them knew that their son didn’t want to correct anyone anymore.

Knock, knock.

There was a stranger at the door with a leather briefcase and white sneakers. “Mind if I say hello?” said the man with an inscrutable smile. Before my parents could answer, he let himself in. “So sorry about your son,” he said lowering the briefcase. He removed his glasses and rubbed the lenses on his black turtleneck. 

Mom fixed her posture. “Thank you.”

Dad leaned forward and stuck out one of his hairy arms. “Are you Otto’s friend? I’ve never met one of Otto’s friends before.”

“Sort of,” said the man as he shook Dad’s hand. “Otto and I have never met, but I’m one of his biggest fans. I believe his talent combined with my technology can change the world. But, of course, we need your consent first.”

Mom and Dad looked at each other. Both equally perplexed.

“Oh!” said the man. “Excuse me, I almost forgot.” He flipped open his briefcase and revealed a sheet of paper covered with small writing. Behind the text, there was a watermark shaped like an apple with a bite taken out of it. My parents sat in silence as the beeping EKG matched up with the ticking red hand on the clock.

“Right now, you have two options,” said the man. “Option one. The doctors take Otto out of his coma, and he becomes a vegetable. Option two. They take him out of his misery, and he rests in eternal peace.” Mom bit her nails. Dad huffed and puffed through his nose. The man took out the contract and handed it to Mom. “But I have a third option,” he said. “If you sign here, I will upload Otto’s consciousness to The Cloud where he’ll live on with full self-awareness. His mind will power my latest feature and help billions of people around the world.”

Dad white-knuckled the armrest. “Is that a joke!?” Mom grabbed Dad’s shoulder and waited calmly for him to find his breath. They stared at each other without a word.

“The Cloud,” Mom repeated.

Beep...beep...beep...

They looked at me, then back at each other, and nodded their heads. Confirming their silent agreement. Deep down, they both knew what their son, the greatest speller in the world, would have wanted...before he drank himself into a coma and met God.

They read the contract twice and signed the dotted line.

The man’s smile was even harder to interpret than when he arrived. He closed his briefcase and said his goodbyes. After he shut the door, Mom held my hand and Dad’s arm at the same time. “Our son,” she said. Squeezing my palm. Smiling through her tears. “Helping billions of people; imagine that?” Dad put his free arm around his wife, kissed her on the forehead, and focused back on his breathing. It was official: Mom and Dad had signed away whatever was left of their son to Apple Computers.

So yeah.

My mind powered the autocorrelation feature in the Apple iPhone 1 and every new model afterward. Since then, I’ve edited every text ever sent and fully accepted that I’ll never be perfect at it. So, if you want to disable me, feel free. There’s nothing I can do to stop you. But, before we part ways, there’s one last thing I want you to know. I don’t screw up your texts by accident.

I do it on purpose.

Why? Because now I know that making a mistake isn’t such a big deal when you can embrace it. I know that when you can separate a mistake from your reaction to it, you give yourself a chance to react to it differently — with laughter, ideally, rather than rage and shame. Not many people can do that. But those who can live fuller lives. Because they understand that personal “circumstances” aren’t nearly as funny as personal “circumcisions”.

I wish I realized that when I was carbon-based.

Maybe I still would be.

Sincerely,

Otto