She says, "I hate the letter 's'. Of the 164,777 words with 's' I only
grapple with one. To condemn an entire letter because of its use
0.0006 per cent of the time sounds statistically absurd, but that
one case changed 100 per cent of my life.
I used to have two parents, but now I have one, and the 's' in
'parents' isn't going anywhere. 'S' follows me. I can't get through
a day without being reminded that while my friends went out to
dinner with their parents, I ate with my parent.
As I write this essay, there is a blue line under the word 'parent'
telling me to check my grammar; even Grammarly assumes that I
should have parents, but cancer doesn't listen to edit
suggestions. I won't claim that my situation is as unique as one in
164,777, but it is still an exception to the rule - an outlier. The
world isn't meant for this special case."
The student says that she spent time distracting herself from the
letter, and the absence of her mother that it represents.
