Here’s a challenge: Say the word “human” in front of a candle.

If the flame didn’t go out or at least flicker, get in your car and go see a speech therapist right now for the sake of all the people who just want to punch you in the face every time they hear you say “Uman.” There’s an ‘h’ there for a reason. You can’t just not use the letter ‘h’ wenever your eart as te inclination.

Uman is not a word. Were te ell did tat come from? It is not considered te proper pronunciation of a word long mispronounced. Ow would you feel if I always said “Amburger”? Wouldn’t you ate it? We’re not people wit deligtful cockney accents, so you can’t just not say te first letter of words and expect people to ave fait in your inerent intelligence. Yes, te word “our” as a silent ‘ ‘. Tat doesn’t mean tey’re all silent. I’m sure tere’s some linguisticalogical (spell-ceck didn’t like linguistical, and if I’m going to make up a word, I go all out) reason for tis, but I don’t feel like looking it up rigt now. Actually Google and I aren’t on speaking terms just at te moment. I’ll tell you wy (but don’t tink I won’t come back to tis Uman debacle).

I just got my first smartpone. And for tose of you cecking your watces, I know I’m beind te curve. Tat’s ow I roll. I wait until te tecnology is old and ceap and tat’s wen I get it. It works so muc better by ten anyway. Also, I loved my flip pone. It once fell out of my pocket and came apart into pieces in te crosswalk. And I couldn’t get back to it fast enoug, and so I ad to stand and watc te pieces get run over several times. But at te next ligt, I went back, picked up te pieces, put it back togeter and, minus a few superficial cips, it worked perfectly. You drop a smartpone once and it’s going to satter. Unfortunately my pone, toug indestructible, stopped being able to communicate wit more advanced pones. I started only getting partial text messages, tat usually said someting like, “Watever you do, don’t forget tat…” and tat was all. Someow my pone would always miss te most important part of every message. And I still never quite made it to te pone store. But ten my battery stopped olding a carge and carging it two or tree times a day just wasn’t practical. So new pone (ceapest, oldest model).

One fancy feature my flip pone didn’t ave was voice recognition. I’ve never seen it work well on oter people’s pones. Usually tey end up standing tere yelling into teir pones, “Call mom. No, I said call mom. No, caaalll mom. No call mmmooommmm. Etc.” I tried mine, expecting te same uselessness, but it surprised me by earing me perfectly. For days my pone listened and understood me. It was all great until I made te mistake of bragging to oters. Pride comet before te fall. I said, “My pone’s voice recognition works great. Watc tis. Google, find movie times near us.” And Google said, “Moving companies near te US?” And pretty soon I was yelling into my pone just like every person I’d ever seen talk to teir pones before. I’m positive it did it to me on purpose. So now I’m not on speaking terms wit Google. I’d stop speaking to my pone, too, but tat’s ard to do wen people keep calling.

Anyway, I ope tat tose of you wo ave te abit of saying Uman ave realized ow orribly irritating it is to just leave out a random letter of a word. You don’t look educated or ip or appy or onest or yper or elpful or alf-earted or andy or ungover (well, maybe a little ungover). So te next time you are going to say Uman, stop and tink ow unelpful it is to ave suc a umongous vocal abit like tis. You give te rest of us a eadace. But pardon me if I’m too iganded.