Why I Don't Support Chick-Fil-A

So today is the unofficial Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day. Supporters of the fast food restaurant have been urged to turn out in droves to show their support for the company and it's stance on moral and ethical issues.

I can't believe I just wrote that sentence about a fast food joint.

You won't see me at Chick-Fil-A today, however. No sir, no ma'am. I am vehemently opposed to their stance on what I think is one of the major issues affecting Americans today. I feel like Chick-Fil-A's support for, or rather lack of support for, one of the big issues that is facing our ability to communicate freely and express who we are cannot be overlooked.

The issue I'm talking about, of course, is spelling.

People decry the poor spelling of young people today and attribute it to "text-speak." But I honestly think the corruption of our spelling ethic goes back farther than just the introduction of SMS texting. I think it can be traced back to the early 1960s, when Truett Cathy flaunted basic spelling rules and spelled his restaurant "Chick-Fil-A" instead of the orthographically correct "Chick Fillet"

Oh, the English teachers who must have wept upon seeing that sign.

But, it got worse. The Powers That Be behind this chicken franchise weren't satisfied with ruining the spelling of fillet. Their marketing campaign raised the desecration of the English to new heights.

It makes my former-copy-editor heart bleed just looking at the atrocious spelling.

And now, the chickens (so to speak) have come home roost, with an entire generation of children who can't spell correctly. Surrounded by billboards that exhort them to "Eat Mor Chikin," of course they will start to think it's okay to write sentences like "R U OK? L8R! LOL!" What a world, what a world!

So I hope you will stand with me today and say, "No! We will not support the ongoing corruption of the written English language! No, we will not continue down this road to destruction of the written word."

I won't rest until Chick-Fil-A issues an apology and corrects its spelling.

Eh, who am I kidding? I'll probably still rest before.

But I still won't eat more chicken.

In the beginning...

And so here I am. Staring at a blank screen that is just waiting for me to fill it up with words. Sigh. It always starts like this, doesn't it? Where to start? Where to begin?

I guess I should start with why I'm doing this - why am I writing? Why am I starting over with a new blog? I wrote 73 posts on my last blog; why not build upon that? Well, the truth is (and I have a feeling I will be writing those words a lot in the coming days), I needed a do-over. Not a fresh slate - in this day and age, no one gets one of those anymore - but a chance to go with a different type of theme for my blog. I stopped blogging on my old site for several reasons. One was time, of course. Another was motivation. My last blog was filled with diatribes and criticisms. Not really anger, per se, but more like an opinion column. And, well, at this point in my life, I just don't have the angry energy to write an opinion column on a regular basis - that was me 15 years ago. For me, at the ripe old age of 34, writing has once again returned to what it used to be: a chance to express. A chance to get down on paper - or screen, as it were - the words and thoughts that are bouncing around in my mind. A chance to be honest.

So, here I am.

I came up with blog name as I was walking through the grocery store today, with a thousand different thoughts bouncing around in my head, thinking about where my life is, what I have become.

Messy.

My life is always messy. And I don't mean in a cobwebs-hanging-off-of-the-fan kind of way, I mean in a what-paintball-or-water-balloon-am-I-juggling-at-the-moment kind of way. I've always got too much going on, whether it's with my family, my work, myself. I'm messy in that I aspire to do so much in so many areas, but then something shiny catches my eye and, whoops! I'm messy in that my life is a constantly choreographed chaos, and I always swear I'll do better next time...but never quite follow through. And, of course, like so many "messy" individuals, both literally and metaphorically, I excel at cleaning up my messes and trying to learn from them. Probably so I can make a bigger mess next time.

Muddy.

Last year, I discovered a new passion of mine: obstacle course racing, or as they are more popularly known, mud runs. In the last year and a half, I've gone from being a couch potato to happily crawling through my share of muddy, barbed wire covered fields. And while I end up pretty messy after each race, I've found that mud actually keeps me clean. It is my balance. It's what keeps me grounded. And it has a nasty way of ending up in the inner parts of your ears so that you find bits of it weeks later.

Mommy.

I hate being defined by one aspect of my life. I am not just one thing. I am a combination of many things. But, when it all comes down to it, I am at the phase of my life in which the title I hear most often is "mommy." Though I have been trying to break my dear husband out of the habit of calling me that instead of my given name.

And so, there it is. Who I am at this point in time. Messy muddy mommy. Life's a journey. You're going to get quite dirty along the way...