Way back in elementary school, some of my classmates had a dispute over how to spell a particular word. Someone remembered that I was a good speller, and they asked me to arbitrate. "Is it b-l-o-o-n or b-l-o-o-m?" the spokesman asked.
I said, "Um, if you mean a flower, it's b-l-o-o-m."
"No, no, not a flower," said one of them. "The thing you blow up and tie on a string."
"Oh," I said. "Balloon. That's b-a-l-l-o-o-n."
"No, it isn't," they all scoffed as one. "That can't be it. It has to be bloon or bloom." And off they went, still disputing.
A Dutch priest of the 15th century, Desiderius Erasmus, is said to have said "In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king." Maybe. But sometimes the one-eyed man is the goat.
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