In the 8th grade, I was the class champion speller. As I’m getting older, my spelling seems to get worser and werserest. Words that never gave me a problem now look funny to me and I have to check. I usually open Word and use it in a sentence for the auto spellcheck.
There are a few words I always want to spell incorrectly: necessary (does it have two c’s?), separate (shouldn’t that 2nd vowel by an e?), and weird (i before e except to be weird? 
) Even now, I’m not sure I wrote these words correctly.
And lately I substitute homophones. Not just the usual their/they’re or right/write, but much more startling cases, like “value” for “vowel.” (This example just happened to me in previous paragraph.) I have to proofread e-mail carefuly to avoid looking the idiot. (My SDMB posts are usually OK, due to Preview and Edit … I caught vowel->value above!)
I do find myself staring at simple words sometimes and thinking the spelling is bizarre – “young” seemed weird just a few hours ago – but I do know they’re spelled right.
One of the most common words in English doesn’t follow the i-before-e “rule” - their. It’s why I always thought it was a foolish principle to drum into a child.
I am having a hard time with “wonder” lately. It wants to be “oneder.” Or similarly, “I one that game… er… won.”
I once had to ask someone to spell Jones for me. All I could think of was Joans.
Yes! Me too. It’s extremely frustrating to feel that my brain is turning to spelling mush.
I remember a terrifying morning in second grade when I could not remember how to spell “feel.” I had to walk from the city bus stop to school and spent the whole walk freaking out, because how was I supposed to write my Iditarod faux-diary entry, which was a day late because I’d either been sick or been pulled out for the dentist (don’t remember it now), if I couldn’t write down how I felt?
Remembered how to spell “feel” just as I was about to cross the road. I’m pretty sure I’d have been hit by a car if I hadn’t figured it out, I was so focused on the spelling.
I once forgot how to spell ‘maybe.’ I was 16 at the time.
As an English teacher, I grade mountains of spelling words/test/sentences. After a while, I have to look at the book to see how the stupid word is really spelled, because I’ve seen it spelled wrong in so many different ways…
Well, that’s the deal, I think. I’m glad to hear people saying they are influenced by the disturbing use of the language online. Always feels like an alibi but I am certain that my use of English has been affected by the time I spend on the computer.
Or is that effected?
Something else I think affects it is the realization, rather late in life, that my grandparents were speaking English as a second language and I am noticing that my construction might be veering toward theirs now that I spend less time in the atmosphere of educated people.