The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [13]
That night, Jane finished the front page of the website. Now we could show our visitors a visual representation of our route, bios, and a statement of our mission. Not only would our little cartoon avatar heads travel around the map of the United States—they bounced when you hovered over them. I loaded Jane’s superior handiwork online, and with that, the Typo Eradication Advancement League was in business. Oh, the lives we would touch!
That is, once people actually stumbled across the website in the first place.
I spent an hour making the little Jeff head bounce when I should have been making a final inventory of my supplies. Then I sent an e-mail to my friends and family announcing the official launch of the website and my imminent departure. I figured a few people might be interested in following along; possibly one of the Boston alt-weeklies would do a piece on the journey when I got back. Though the goals of TEAL were lofty, I didn’t expect many folks to truly understand. I stayed up late ripping my entire CD collection to my laptop and then went to sleep, one last time, in my own bed.
TYPO TRIP TALLY
Total found: 4
Total corrected: 2
* To avoid sounding like a commercial, I will generally use this term, which is what I tended to call it in my head.
* When presenting erroneous text within quotes, we’ve left the punctuation outside (“Referral”! rather than “Referral!”) in the interest of precise quotation.
4 | Benjamin Joins the Party
March 9, 2008 (Rockville, MD)
Veteran and rookie grammatical Champions find themselves immediately hemmed in by typos when first they set rubber soles to the hunt. Even this opening Gauntlet is but a dwarf, however, when compared to the Golem of apostrophic misappropriations to come.
On a chill and dank early morning in Silver Spring, Maryland, a lone figure stalked through a parking lot and up the walk to a girl’s apartment. The wind gusted again, and he braced himself against the frigid splatter of rain as he made his quiet way to the door, hoping through an alcohol-induced haze that he’d come to the right place. The first rap-tap-tapping went unheard, so after a short pause the visitor banged louder.
Benjamin D. Herson winced at the cold as he opened the door, his short, slight frame nearly nude. He wore only a scraggly beard and a pair of boxers, neither of which proved sufficient protection against the onslaught.
“Sorry,” I whispered, “to come back so late. We decided—”
“Shhh! It’s nearly four a.m.! Get in here!” he whispered harshly, and hauled me inside. I had fortunately already unrolled my sleeping bag before I left to hang out with some D.C. friends from the old Rocks & Minerals days, so I was able to feel my way into it in the darkness. I’d overdone the booze a bit in an effort to burn off the stresses of my initial few days of typo hunting. Benjamin and his girlfriend, Jenny, had the heat cranked up in her tiny efficiency, and I felt glad but confused. My watch had 2:40 a.m. Pretty late to return from an outing, but still not quite 4:00 a.m. Then I recalled today’s date, and tetrominoes in my addled brain snicked together as I glanced at the glowing red numbers next to Jenny’s bed: 3:40. No wonder Benjamin had been about ready to spring forward for my throat.
I heard the thump of my head falling back against the sleeping-bag pillow, and then it was time to get up already, Benjamin informing me that I’d slept plenty. Through bleary eyes I gazed up at my new sidekick. This time he was fully dressed, sporting one of his trademark rock-band T-shirts. An old, battered Dartmouth hat perched on his head. Pretty much as I remembered him from our days as roommates. He bobbed up and down, impatient for action.
Today the proverbial rubber would meet the road. I’d have no more excuses for tepid typo-snaring.