Yes, it finally happened.

I’m free.

Dr. King spoke it best, but I can say it too:

And in the end, it was pretty easy:

– A quick search;

– The right turns in the Labyrinth of Settings.

– A single swipe;

– No money down, and

– Not even any “Accept” and “Agree” buttons to click.

Then, when I moved the little dot from “On” to “Off”

PRESTO! It was gone.

I had broken the shackles.

Sawed through the handcuffs.

Picked the lock on the thick cell door.

Yes, mark it on the calendar: September 19, 2021 is The Day I —

TURNED OFF “Auto Correct”!

Yes, much-maligned Google still had enough juice to point the way without putting me through several hours worth of self-playing ads.

And while the IOS geniuses of Apple had buried it several layers down, the switch was right where Google said it was supposed to be.

So now, I am finally liberated and able to feel at long last the thrill of—

Making my OWN stupid mistakes again.

Not some damned fiendishly inventively algorithm’s anymore. MINE.

I was late to the grim party of recording the old regime’s endless horrors: the slip of a pinkie on one letter that was used to turn a weighty colleague’s name into a rude insult; the recurrent demonstration that even after a serious brush with the Ivy League, I had no clue how “its” differed from “it’s”. Or with more at stake, the time  “Clopidogrel” (a blood thinner crucial to many heart patients) became “Cloud ogres” in an email to the Doc. Or when “Short link” turned into “chortling”; and “Bibles” morphed into “Orca inlets.” (Not making any of these up. Other sufferers will have their own lists of lasting humiliations.)

But those days should finally be past. Now the ball is back in my court, and the old gang of familiar typos and screwups can regather, where they’ll be, one hopes, more manageable, less monumentally dumb.

I mean, “Orca inlets”??