MONCTON – Michelle Javernick, nurse and mother of two, walked straight into the lush New Brunswick wilderness this week to restart her life after unsuccessfully attempting to spell “recommend” three times.
After watching a popular Netflix series, Mrs. Javernick fatefully tried to tweet “Finally saw Squid Game, highly recommend it!” The first time she typed “reccommend,” then “reccomend.” After “recomend” also came back with the red squiggly line under it, she knew it was time to CTRL-Z the life and career she’d spent decades building.
“I didn’t agree to live in a society! My ancestors made the poor decision to crawl out of the mud, create a culture, and diseminate– dissemminate– spread their language, so now I need to know how many Cs and how many Ms? This is why the Joker became the Joker,” read Ms. Javernick’s goodbye message carved into the side of a tree.
Ms. Javernicks friends and co-workers say they understand and respect her decision. Best friend Sarah Protter confirmed she supports Michelle, having nearly walked into the wide open plains of Saskatchewan herself back in college when she had to use “recommend” in an essay. “I got it wrong twice and saw the end nearing. Fortunately, I nailed it the third time. And thank god, because even Clippy couldn’t figure out what I was going for,” explained Ms. Protter.
According to the Javernick family, who can still see her in the woods from their deck, Michelle has joined up with other mispellers who quit society. The “Fuck Merriam-Webster” colony includes a grad student who mixed up “accept” and “except,” a former teacher who tried to type “embarrass” on a shared screen while 30 teenagers watched, and Ahmed Loughty, an activist who was violently exiled from his movement for spelling “diasporic” wrong in a widely-dispersed Google Doc.
“This lonesome forest life was my only recourse after I made the Google Doc public,” said Mr. Loughty. “I don’t belong to that world anymore. If you see my family, tell them I’m sorry.”
In a CBC Radio interview, psychologist Dr. Fiona Melgren commented, “There are some phenomena so nihilistically painful, they make the comforts of civilization seem meaningless. Climate change is a big one of those, but you know, spelling is a bitch too.” Dr. Melgren had to cut the interview short to finish proofreading a paper she’s presenting tomorrow; when the radio host suggested she use Grammarly to speed up the process, Dr. Melgren sighed and said, “if only.”
At press time, Mrs. Javernick and her hermit friends were engaging in a turf war against a group who abandoned their homes after they couldn’t get the USB in even after trying both sides.
