The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [27]
When finally the storm had spent itself, returning to a hearty rain, we saw our shelter companion safely onto her bus and sloshed onward. Within minutes we found a CVS where I picked up an assortment of dry-erase markers. With a new appreciation for underground shopping, we returned, as promised, to the supposed cousin-rendered sign. Our work couldn’t be up to its usual standard. Despite the eras-ability of whiteboards, the text was meant to be permanent, and the letters were crammed too closely together to allow a natural insertion of the second n into PREGNACY, so I had to use the proofreader’s caret to do so. Having already marred this sign somewhat, I went ahead and crossed out the offending letters in SOUVINER and wrote in the correct ones above, considering after I finished that a quick arrow would have done the trick. Benjamin and I glared in mutual dissatisfaction at the sign, but we felt we’d met our daily obligation to humanity.
The next day, my good fortune continued as our Atlanta hosts, Abby and Eli, brought me to the Emory University Hospital ER (the one option for medical care on a Sunday) to get my ailing eye treated. Then, while Benjamin headed off for a necessary haircut, I strolled down to another drugstore for a transparent makeup bag that would serve as a container for my ever-burgeoning collection of typo-correcting tools. My Typo Correction Kit was finally an actual kit.
Still, one thing nagged at me that morning as Abby loaded us up with her savory, buttery scones. The whole purpose of this quest, to rid the world of the scourge of typos, could be viewed in a different way: I was attending to public communication in its written form, attempting to enhance the clarity of the message. If typos were a communication issue, I wondered what other barriers existed among my countrymen that frustrated attempts at open and honest interchange.
Maybe my mission itself should be broadened to include all forms of communication troubles. Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to do that. I wasn’t even sure what I meant. For the time being, I decided to make a mental note of how broader communication issues surfaced during our labors. Benjamin and I said our farewells to our exceedingly gracious hosts and climbed into Callie to continue on our way westward, unaware that the Underground Atlanta episode was only the first that would complicate our seemingly straightforward quest. Like physics in the late twentieth century, my mission had begun to gain extra dimensions.
TYPO TRIP TALLY
Total found: 38
Total corrected: 21
7 | Fear and Retail
March 17–18, 2008 (Mobile, AL, to New Orleans, LA)
Chronicling a tale of two cities’ reactions toward our heroes’ fateful Endeavors: It was the best of typos. It was the worst of typos. From Mobile to New Orleans, the battle betwixt Automatons and Autonomy blazes.
I awoke to a joyous morning in an Alabama hotel room, finding that my battered eye had convalesced enough to actually permit vision. Markers and pens and elixir of correction are important, but oh how vital to have the most basic of typo-hunting tools, the ones physically yoked to your head, in good working order. Now I could tend to my most faithful companion, Callie, who had expressed greater distress with each turn of her engine. Before leaving Montgomery, we took her in for a new battery, and for part of the wait, Benjamin and I explored the dark caverns of a nearby mall. A deserted mall, it turned out, with more space open for rent than for business; they’d decided to save money by leaving most of the lights off. Surely this was not what Victor Gruen, architect of the fully enclosed shopping complex, had envisioned. Our footsteps echoed with eerie clacks.
From my first blunderings around in Boston to more recent stumbles in Montgomery, I’d discovered that to find more typos, I needed to find more text. A grocery store