Knowing One's Letters

You know how there are people who just hate to write? Well obviously I’m not one of them but Bert is. He loves to read and is quite literate but, for him, the act of writing is a terrible chore. The only stuff he writes down on a regular basis are the names of plants when he’s writing invoices and making out orders. He usually tries to get me to fill in his other forms and to write his letters for him. The other day he had a reference to write and, as usual, tried to palm the task off to me. I suggested I dictate it to him and he could write it. He struggled with it for a while. Then he asked,

“How do you make an F?”

“It’s the first letter of fremontodendron.”

“Right.”

But at least he can spell ‘blatant’.

Another person having trouble with letters at her first aid training is Hannah.

As always there's some total eejit that says something stupid and, as always, it's me who says it. We were given several letters. G C L I P S. We were told they were the 1st letter to several words that were all different types of blood-loss wounds. He gave us the answer to G (graze) and told us to figure out the rest. We worked in groups and each group got the same answers. We all got all but one right. We all thought C was for cut but when the guy said they were all kinds of cuts and what else could it be, I yelled out,

"Castration''

"Sorry, what?" yer fella says.

"Castration", says I, "You know when your hand is cut off or something.''

"You mean amputation Hannah?" he says with a smile.

"Aye that's what I mean."

''Castration's something else Hannah but we'll chat about that later" he says, still smiling, everyone laughing.

"Aye but it's still a blood-loss wound." says I, going bright red.