Spell,count or prepare to die

Atleast three people called to tell me that I have got my spellings wrong in my posts.Well for starters thats because spellcheck doesnt work anymore on blogger and for people like me that was a lifesaver,but that brings me to the current post.It set me thinking about the two biggest hurdles in my life.I never learnt to spell right or to count right.The mind works overtime and my thoughts spill over in haste so if it were talking oneself out of a situation,I can do it under any circumstance but write it down and I am lost(though I still manage to communicate and thats what matters in the end).
So all this feedback set me thinking as to why spelling and counting or rather maths and written english elude me.It starts way back when I learnt to read and write.My father( always a stickler for getting everything right) would insisit that I read books on a daily basis.Somehow despite being terrified of him I muddled through it and managed to get it right so reading is something I enjoy.By the time I was in class three,both my sisters were to take me to school or supervise my homework.By this time the eldest was in college reading english lit and the second was finishing school.I remember (i think it was trainning for future professions,they went on to become teachers with loads of papers to correct) them getting hold of red ink pens and correcting everything that I wrote.Big red circles were made on homework sheets with such joy that in time to come I was to develope redophobia(thats fear of the colour red or in this case of the red ink).When I attempted to get on their right side with little notes,they would pounce on it with glee(you guessed right,too many spelling mistakes).Their glee at the red circles did nothing for my spelling skills(if anything it got worse).I was delighted when I discovered spell check.I said a prayer for the inventor (to me saviour of the downtrodden bad speller)and started to enjoy the joys of writing,but alas all joy is shortlived and with blogger spellcheck not working,its back to red circles except that this time its not from the wicked elder sisters(I always identified with cinderella as a child)but from friends and extended family.
Maths...yet another one of my failures,this time the father inflicted huge psychological damage(its sound so much better to be melodramatic)by getting me to do mental arithmetic(calculating in the head without the aid of paper and pencil).For the life of me I cant count without my fingers(having just 10 of them is a handicap)but the sheer tension and anxiety of having to get the right answer is enough to scare any child.To this day I hate figures,statistics,maths....my mind will go blank,well it was misery till I discovered the calculator and life took on a new meaning.It got even better when I discovered the simple joys of an excel worksheet.But if my calculator packs up I am back to square one.
I have never got over my fear of spellings or maths and thinking back one is never sure how simple teaching methods can affect a person.Sometimes I think its looking at things in too simple a manner but the fact remains that I can trace both to childhood,so now that all my readers know my greatest fears and my biggest drawback,why dont you just read for the fun of it and not stress me out with spelling mistakes,thank you very much.