I don't type it often but, when I do, I have to stop, exhale, think. Each keystroke feels like cutting the next wire from a soon to blow up bomb: b-e-g-r-u-d-g-i-n-g-l-y. It is, ironically, the word I spell most begrudgingly.
The start is simple enough: "Be". As in be happy, be cheerful, be a grumpy resentful bastard. So far, so good.
Then the plot thickens. The whole thing goes bonkers and even if I try to focus on "grudge" as the root, I still mess it up. I guess I'm just not used to holding grudges: in case of bitter disagreements I don't begrudgingly walk away, I simply tell people there and then, unbegrudgingly, what I think -usually with some colorful Spanish expressions that, believe me, I can spell even backwards.
Sometimes I even spell it "begrungely" and I feel like I could be the man who begrungely sold the world.
But imagine you pass that middle part. Grudge. You're at "begrudgin" by now. You've done 2/3 of the job. You think it will soon be over. You forget about that last "g". Just when you are seeking what seems the natural closure, "ly", there waits a treacherous last trap ready to go off in a cruel non-begrudginglous fashion. That word is just laughing at you. At me. At all of us.
So, yeah. Check the face you make when you say "begrudgingly", see all the begrudginglyness reflected on your eyes, your nose, your mouth. It reeks begrudginglivity. Check the furrows on your forehead grow deeper when you try to write that damn word, the cold sweat when you are in the middle of your begrudginging, the panic when the spellchecker goes red. Boom.
But hey, don't let it win. don't let it overbegrudge you. Smile. Be happy, be cheerful, not a resentful bastard. Spell it and say it begrudginglylessly.
I need an aspirin.
[Originally published on Fb page]