Alphabetism

I was thinking about my post on ageism that I did a while back as part of the 30-day blogging challenge (that I'm doing in approximately 30 weeks) and I said:

[P]eople, no matter their sex, race, or age should be judged on their individual abilities, not on attributes they have no control over (such as sex, race, and age).

But I forgot one type of discrimination that is pervasive and insidious in our society. And that is what I call "alphabetism."

What is alphabetism? It is discrimination based on the spelling of your name.

For example: one day in the military they kept everyone in my unit late to get flu shots. Since we couldn't all get shots at once, they fed us into the clinic in small groups. How did they determine who got to go first (and get it over with and be dismissed)? By the spelling of our last names in alphabetical order. And since my last name starts with a "T" which is rather late in the alphabet, I was one of the last people to go.

Many times having your name latter in the alphabet means you wait longer. In grade school one teacher assigned seats by last name. Then when it was time for lunch, we all filed out in the same order. So, of course, I was close to last.

We must fight the scourge of alphabetism.