The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [3]
When I came to, I decided I should attempt another outing, but this one with much more purpose. I immediately bought a sizable wall map of the United States and tacked it over my bed. With the sunset casting an eerie glow through my apartment, I stood enraptured by the sheer span of the nation. So many tiny names, so many roads. Quite a profusion of territory over which to spread the gospel of good grammar—at least several thousand miles. I’d make a loop of the country’s perimeter, since that seemed the best method for (a) seeing the most of this mammoth republic and (b) avoiding covering the same ground twice.
Are you sure about this? quoth the doubting raven in the dark aerie of my mind. Are you sure, are you sure?
“Shut your beak,” I growled. True, my history did not especially glimmer with derring-do. First off, I had been terrified of driving at least until my early twenties, and my travels to date had never taken me west of Ohio; much of the country, most of it, lay beyond my ken. That in itself could argue for the adventure, but I wondered if I might be getting in over my head, setting too many new challenges at once. I’d been shy growing up, not prone to speaking out of turn or, well, speaking much at all. Once I started going around the country trying to correct typos, I’d inevitably have to talk to other people. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this mission of mine would force me to continually confront strangers—oftentimes over their own mistakes! How far did I honestly estimate that I had come from the meek days of yore?
I chose to put these worries aside. I had plenty of time to address them, while other, more tangible items needed immediate attention. Certainly I wouldn’t be able to take a vacation from work for long enough to travel across the country, correcting typos as I went, so I’d have to leave my job. I’d need to set my sights on loftier concerns than income. Spider-Man always had money trouble, after all. If I took the leap for typo hunting in the pursuit of a better, more grammatically correct world, so be it.
I could still be sensible in my preparations, though. The trip itself would cost some serious bread. I had a savings account with some starter funds hoarded away, and I earned enough that I could save much more. If I cut costs by not going out as much, packing my lunch more often, and refraining from any extraneous purchases, I could probably save a significant chunk of change. I wouldn’t want to travel the nation in the winter anyway, so I figured I could stay at my job through December and then take a couple of months to organize full-time all the little details of the trip. Not only would I have the chance to build up a respectable bank account, but I could also take more time to analyze the various aspects of this trip and decide if I really and truly could pull it all off.
I reached for a pencil on my desk to start jotting down some notes, and somehow I grabbed a Sharpie instead. It felt right in my hand, as though it had always belonged there. This, I thought, could be the tool to make a hero.
2 | Allies
June 2007-February 2008 (Somerville, MA)
Finds our sleepless Hero amassing Allies for the impending orthographic onslaught across the Nation. For this audacious Cause, he must call upon all species of Persuasion, from breathless verbal sparring to cyberspatial communication, and even climbing unto that very pinnacle of heroics: donning Eighties attire in public.
I discussed my cross-country typo-hunting notion with barely