Alright, so I've gotten a few queries over the years as to why I don't spell like your typical American.  To be truthful, I haven't got a clever answer for you.  I was born and raised in the United States, to American parents; got whisked through the American public school system; and I speak like your everyday, average Jane Doe from the States.  There is no real reason for me to spell like every non-American in the English-speaking world, except for this: most Americans spell incorrectly.

I'd learnt how to read at two years old.  By age five I was reading several of the zillion copies of Alice In Wonderland  that I'd received as a baby (creative, eh?).  I was voraciously reading the Anne of Green Gables series in grades two and three. The only channels we really received were PBS and CBS (CBS was fuzzy half the time), so I got constantly exposed to BBC exports and bizarre Canadian children's programming.  I simply got used to seeing words spelt with a "u."  So much, in fact, that I got in trouble all the time in school.
 

"We don't spell that way here in America," said my grade two teacher.
"Why?  It looks prettier," I would reply.
"Well, it's wrong."
"But I looked it up in the dictionary!  It says 'colour' can be spelt either way!  I like that way better!"
"But you're in America, so spell it my way or I'm marking it wrong! And stop writing in cursive!  I haven't taught it to you yet!"
"But my mommy taught me how to write in cursive already! I hate pencils! Meredith poked me in the thumb with one and I can't get the lead out of it!"
"Give me that fountain pen and go in the corner until it's time for social studies!"
 
 

I stubbornly spelt words the way I felt was more proper; and continued to get in trouble up until my senior year of high school.  I actually told my senior year English teacher that my family was Canadian and we are programmed genetically to spell things differently than "Yanks."  Total lie, but she was stupid anyway and probably believed me, even though I don't pronounce "z" as "zed", which would have betrayed my true identity.  But she had a pronunciation problem, too.
 
 
 
 

"Mrs Waxmonkey, it isn't pronounced 'the Duke of GLOO-caster."
"Really, Alice.  Well, then I'm sure you can tell me how is IS pronounced."
"It's GLOSS-ter."
"And how come you are an authority on this?"
"I'll prove it to you."
"Sit down, Alice, you're disrupting class."
"Well you're pronouncing it incorrectly and so is the rest of the class. Here, read the stupid O.E.D. See? GLOSS-ter.  It's a kind of cheese, too. "
"GO TO THE OFFICE, ALICE! I'VE HAD IT WITH YOU!"
 

I went, but not without a horrible fight. I got picked on a lot for being such a dumb-ass; and ordered to keep my stupid mouth shut so they can get King Lear over with as quickly as possible; and to quit pretending I was English or something.  Whatever.  I'm NOT English, doy-y-yyy.  Really, why is it wrong to spell things differently from Americans?

But, really, my question should be, why do Americans  spell things differently from the rest of the English-speaking world?  It makes no sense!  Are Americans trying to prove something by eliminating letters from words? Is it because they save precious, precious time by having one less letter? Who did this, anyway?  Was it Noah Webster's idea?

"Boy, those milliseconds sure add up when we're writing those stupid U's; and productivity gets shot to hell.  I say, 'SCREW those pesky letters!  I know!  I'll write a DICTIONARY!"

Was it to differentiate themselves from the British? 

"Well, like, those stupid Redcoats like taxed our tea and crap so we should just like, invent a new way of spelling so we're different from them or whatever.  But we'll still, like, pretend we're British, and then I guess we should like infect the Indians with smallpox blankets or something."
 

Here is something interesting to know: I work in a stationery store now, and we sell Crane's invitations (a company from Massachusetts, which, FYI, also provides the cotton paper used for US currency).  Crane's Blue Book of Etiquette (yes I've read it) suggests that, for a more formal feel, one should spell "favor" with a "u".  Does it change anything, really?  No, the basic information is the same.  Do Americans think that all people from the UK automatically sound more cultured?  Of course!  So to sound more formal, they're informed to spell like the "more cultured people" do.  This is ridiculous!  It isn't more "cultured" to spell "favour" with a "u;" it's how you spell the damn word everywhere else except  here! Why are Americans spelling incorrectly in the first place?

It doesn't stop there.  America has gotten completely out of control with intentional misspellings to grab one's attention:  "La-Z Boy."  "Cheez-It."  "Lite Beer."   It's gotten so bad, in fact, that no one seems to be quite sure just how to spell basic things the CORRECT way anymore.  Spellcheck makes people lazy, and, incidentally, recognises words not spelt the American way as a red zig-zag.  (I secretly think Miss Hartman is behind the whole Microsoft programming brigade, barking orders at them in that buzzsaw voice of hers that haunts my dreams.) 
 

All this stupidity with spelling, and yet, Americans are also the only country to staunchly utilise the old English units of measurements (dating back to Charlemagne, who was illiterate).  Unfortunately, I'm too stupid in math to make the conversion calculations to metric (which is a hell of a lot easier when you're just working with that and not conversions).
 

I don't know, maybe I've been stupid all these years to fight so diligently over something as asinine as semantics.  And yet, my friend, this IS America, after all; so shouldn't I have the freedom to spell the way I want to?  After all, I AM spelling correctly; even if it isn't the norm in the United States.  I doubt nowadays Miss Hartman would raise a fuss when there are 10 different Caitlins in her classroom, each spelt in a different way to accentuate "individuality.". I do NOT advocate that.  Caitlin is not spelt "K-A-Y-T-E-L-E-N-N."  And sorry, all you wacky feminists, I do not recognise "womyn"  as a valid word, either.
When it comes to spelling, I do not believe in bucking the status quo (for once). 

Unfortunately, in America, I do it every day.