The Facetious Bet

This weekend started out with great promise – a promise of a lot of hard work to get GoatMan Hollow ready for opening – which meant more painting, lots more painting. We spent the better part of Saturday painting in Madame Jacinda’s room, creating a distressed wallpaper look, complete with mold and mildew.
After a long day, we were preparing to leave, when another GMH’er and I were trading wisecracks and I mentioned that I was amazed that he did not know a certain word. He retorted that he certainly did. This went back and forth, and then those fateful words were uttered: “Wanna Bet?”
Being wildly confident, I pounced and even had the temerity to set the bet price at a rather unconservative amount: $50. I was so smugly confident I would win, since I had saved the email that had the offending word in it. All I had to do was produce the email and the $50 was mine. So I did, I found the email, and showed it to him. We then Googled it, and found it was correct. After the burden of proof was off my shoulders, I left that night assured in my victory.
(Aside: I recall when I initially wrote the word that the spelling seemed not quite right, so I spell checked it in MS Word and checked for the spelling online. Even with this validation, it didn’t look right, but who am I to question 2 independent sources – surely they wouldn’t lead me astray. .)
Sunday dawned, and I spent most of the rest of Sunday at GoatMan taunting the loser of the bet. He was still unconvinced and began to attempt to rally his pals to find evidence to the contrary. Still, I was confident, and it seemed so were most of the other folks at GMH. This was turning out to be a fun little rivalry.
When I got home, I pulled out my trusty Webster’s dictionary. I was so smug with self-satisfaction that I wasn’t quite prepared for what happened next, in plain old black and white, there it was: facetious – the word in contention, spelled not as I had, but with an extra letter, an “e”. My word also existed: factious, miserably taunting me by its mere existence, located lower on the page.

ARRRRGGGGH! THIS CANNOT BE !
But it was. What confounds me still is why my Word spell checker cannot find that spelling. It still can’t – it’s indicating that there is no such word.
So now I must eat crow, and admit, that I was incorrect – but on a technicality. I know it is the honorable thing to do – to come clean and admit that I was not right on this count – that I am – ACK – fallible – and that I will never – EVER – again trust my spell check again, much less make a bet with it as my backup. Yes, I’m choking on this, but I will admit it, and pay up.
October is going to be one long month. How will I ever live with the shame?