The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [26]
Anyway, would some people be scared away by Reverend Wright’s gaffes? Benjamin said no way and then proceeded to explain what he really liked about Obama—the man’s ability to take even the attacks against him, break them down, and analyze them. “He’ll end up responding in some way that turns it to his advantage, because he’s a great communicator.” There I heard it again, like an insistent tympanum behind the conversation that had steadily gained force and tempo: communication. As he explained his lack of concern, Benjamin essentially predicted Obama’s landmark speech on race that would come three days later, but I hardly noticed, caught in a revelation of my own.
What if the typos themselves weren’t my real nemesis? Graver communication issues skulked in the shadows and back alleys of our conversations and relationships. What good would fixing spelling do if the message remained distorted? My mind reeled in the grip of these ideas. One typo—the absence of a tiny mark to contract “I am”—had triggered an illuminating conversation that I’d never have had otherwise. There was more to this than the mere hunting of typos. Without being able to express the true extent of my gratitude, I thanked our fellow Obama booster for her promised contribution to orthography, and we took our leave.
I didn’t know how to explain my thoughts to Benjamin about communication troubles, my mission, and the dance of subtext I’d witnessed, so I didn’t bring them up. Instead we went on through Underground Atlanta, ate some subs, and caught a couple of spelling goofs topside that were encased in thick plastic: “entertainmvent,” a typo in the strictest sense of the word, and double-letter confusion with “pavillion”. Benjamin noted the phonetic logic of the latter, as double letters usually signal that the vowel preceding them is short.
I wanted to reflect more on the discoveries I’d stumbled onto underground with the Obama correction, but first we had to complete the day’s initial objective: to find some dry-erase markers. Unfortunately, as we wandered around the downtown avenues, the clouds carried out their threat and let loose. At first we trudged on through the instant soaking, but as the intensity of falling rain increased and I noted the sky’s odd glow, some primal alarm went off in my brain. I saw a bus-stop shelter, shouted to Benjamin, and we dashed in and huddled in the corner with a woman who wouldn’t quite reach that baby shower on time. Two gigantic, gift-filled pink bags sat on the bench beside her.
The three of us watched the sky falling. The rain now plunged down not as individual drops but as thick, heavy sheets, slapping the streets with layers of water that overwhelmed the drainage system. Half the street flooded. I was regretting that I’d parked my pollen-covered Callie in a garage, since she could’ve used a bath, when we heard the first of a series of raps on the shelter that rang out above the sound of the slamming rain. Hail. I changed my mind about my car’s current crash pad, glad to have her safeguarded. Soon our ankles were being pelted with chunks of ice that ricocheted off the sidewalk. The shelter took a hard beating, and we watched cars crawling by, the water level halfway up their tires, their windshield wipers swinging like wild swords to fend off the attack of a thousand hailstones.
Apparently a tornado