Learning to spell.

I must admit that i'm still learning to spell. I used to think I had a relatively good command of the English language, but that word game that shall remain nameless put me in my place right handily.
There are still words that are beyond my 'lock & load' for instance, Diahrea..no hang on..*clicks on onelook* gimme a sec here...DIARRHEA. There. It doesn't matter how many times I use it, have it, or look it up I still misspell it.
I was just thinking not about diarrhea, but about learning to spell as a child.
Every time I asked my mother how to spell something, she'd say "look it up in the dictionary" (Webster's Unabridged, full volume, kept in the pantry room) And I was always baffled & would say "but if I can't spell it, how can I find it?" and mom would just happily go on about her tasks & say..If you don't look it up you will never spell it, why not just read the dictionnary....???now I understand better how a busy mom can get rid of an annoying child, I think I got halfway through A. before I gave up on reading the entire tome...but first I looked for all the swear words I could think of & was greatly disappointed to find that Mr. Webster lied his ugly old pants off when he used the term 'unabridged' cause that didn't mean he was including any good smut. ( i'd have SUED him, but I didn't get as far as ATTORNEY.
But i'm again getting off topic. The whole point of this was to say..
Once, maybe twice, but once comes to mind, I stopped mom in her tracks.  I asked how to spell ellemenope. She said what? what?
I said ellemenope, you know.
 It's in the song that Ramona is teaching me.
what?
The song, you know, the song Mona is teaching me.
The alphabet song, I want to know how to write ellemenope.
Dawn.
Do you mean L, M, N, O, P ?
ohhhh. okay.