What we have here is a man who takes his words seriously. Really seriously. It's one thing to be disappointed in a word. To be let down. To feel that something just doesn't make sense. But it's something very different to have a deep and passionate relationship with a seemingly misspelled sentence, and to feel something on the verge of dispair about the lack of logic in the way a word is misspelled in English.

By the way, did I misspell "misspell"? No, I just checked with our friendly dictionary.com -- and I was reassured that those two double consonants are correct. The dictionary tells me that 'misspell' dates from 1645 and is a combination of the words miss and spell (duh). So if I had used only one s or one p, I would have missed the spelling, which I am sure might have dissapointed Bryon -- or rather, disappointed him.

Which also makes me wonder -- how many words can you think of that you can ask that kind of echo-y question -- such as "Did I misspell 'misspell'? It's a rather unusual construction, isn't it? Can you think of any?

Here's one.

"I don't tink you get me,' Louie lamented to Lucinda, his hoity-toity girlfriend. "I feel likes youse is seeing da woist of me. I feels likes instead of seeing my good pernts, you misunderstand."

"Louis," she replied, "I think you are vastly in error. Your lack of education is what I find unappealing, uncouth, and unacceptable. Look at your sentence -- as you attempt to express yourself, you even misunderstand 'misunderstand.'"

"I nevuh unda-stand what youse is saying," Louie retorted. "I just don'ts."

"Louis," she retorted to his retort, "you misunderstand. I understand."

In Bryon's case, we understand. President Ronald Reagan once said (look it up!) "Facts are stupid things." I've never quite understood that, but we know that words are serious things. And we're glad that you take them seriously.