Can I Ask You A Cheese Train?

          A couple of weeks ago my brother-in-law shared the photo of a Great Blue Heron that he took at his beach house in Gulf Shores, Alabama.  I thought it was so amazing that I shared it on Facebook.  And what did Auto Correct say, instead of heron?  Heroin.  That’s right, HEROIN.

          Just what you want to post: “Look at this beautiful Heroin at my brother-in-law’s beach house.” Here is the actual bird:

          And last week Bob sent a text to a business associate, where the word “happy” was changed to “Hotoyama.”

          We’ve all had it happen. Flight becomes Fight. Dear Mother becomes Dead Mother.  Sheet of Paper becomes Cheater Hater.  And worse.  Unprintably worse.

          But I think there’s something more sinister at work here than the mere flubbing of sounds by a recorder.  I think there are techie nerds giggling wildly, in between sips of Orange Crush, as they assign absolutely ridiculous words to the common ones they know darn well we said.

          I mean, seriously, how can you get from “Happy” to “Hotoyama” and why would a computer program pick the incredibly uncommon Japanese name for the very common English adjective? 

          I think they’re gathered around their monitors, going through lists of vocabulary words and assigning crazy substitutes (as a substitute teacher, I’m not sure I like the phrase “crazy substitute,” but whatever).

          This explains getting “I will claw you” instead of “I will call you,” “His wife is Morbid” instead of “His wife is Morgan,” and the Frat House humor words I cannot print here, which always pop up when you’re writing to your bishop or your boss.

          So thanks for wretching my blog today.  My husband, Bra, is taking me out to lurch now.

Don’t text—sit and read my new book, instead.  You can get GOLDEN in paperback or on Kindle!