From when I was very little, I was good with words and terrible with numbers. One often wonders how I ended up following a career in Accountancy. Trust me, I’m clueless myself.

My mom used to put a lot of effort into teaching me all the subjects other than English, because I was too dumb to understand anything by just listening in class. My brother, on the other hand, was better by far in all areas, but had a tough war with English. So he was often made to read and write a lot to chisel his vocabulary and pronunciations to perfection.

Enter : The Devil (myself)

While he worked with his spellings & pronunciations, I would casually pass by him to hear what he was learning. I would then let out a dramatic gasp and give a disapproving nod at the way he pronounced a word. Let’s take ‘residual‘ as an example. He would actually be saying it right, but when I say it’s wrong, he believes it because I’m supposed to be good at it (between us). 

I’ll correct him and tell, for instance, that it’s pronounced as ‘residool‘. He wouldn’t believe me right away, of course. So, I’ll shrug nonchalantly and say the magic words, “Fine. Don’t come crying to me when you get nice spanking from Mom.” I walk off royally, without a care in the world.

I only have to wait for an hour or so, to hear my mom go ballistic at him for wrongly pronouncing a word she taught him two days ago! He would try to drag in my name, but my mom wouldn’t accept such excuses. 

I would unabashedly carry out this feat again, but only after gaining his trust by giving the right pronunciations once or twice!

Ah, sweet life!

Picture courtesy : Pinterest