The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [32]
When I wondered aloud about the difference between RadioShack and our other two encounters, Benjamin burst into hearty laughter.
“RadioShack! Of course!”*
Our last stop was to roam Target for a strap for my Typo Correction Kit, like the one I used for my camera bag. I’d envisioned crossing the straps like bandoliers over my chest, a badass gesture that would send the message to grammatical vandals, defilers of language, and other itinerant evildoers that trifling with Jeff Deck would be one’s final trifle. Failing to find something appropriate, Benjamin grabbed a carabiner clip from the camping equipment section, and I simply linked the Kit to my camera strap. Now I felt like an authentic typo hunter, wearing the weapons of my trade. We exited the mall through the nearest department store and breathed the carbon-monoxide-tinged air of the parking lot with gratitude. Our mall adventure had yielded dispiriting results, but at least we’d broken new territory.
The following morning we hit the road for New Orleans, stopping in Biloxi, Mississippi, on the way (an adventure outside the bailiwick of our tale; suffice it to say that if you ever blow a tire in the South, look for Jerry, repairer of rubber and mender of dreams). By the time we arrived in the French Quarter, afternoon had already begun, and with it a hearty wind. The wind didn’t prevent us from consuming some beignets at Café du Monde, but it did send the powder from those beignets all across Benjamin’s jeans and T-shirt. My white-speckled companion and I proceeded to tramp down Decatur Street. Despite the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, this neighborhood stood pretty much intact.
After our troubles of the previous day, I confess we started out our typo correcting in stealth. Benjamin had been raving for some time now about the ratio of corrected typos versus total found. The percentage had dipped a hair below fifty percent in his first days on board, but we’d gotten it back on track by Beaufort, North Carolina. Since then it had wavered barely above that mark, ever threatening to fall again. With a horde of uncorrected Mobile typos, we’d begun the day at twenty-two of forty-two corrected, only one ahead of the zone of shame. Thus goaded, I consented to his nefarious strategy without much reluctance. We took down several typos via covert assassination, including a Styrofoam sign in a shop window and a cardboard sign for plastic reptiles at a tented bazaar. While fixing the latter, I wondered if many new speakers of the English language made New Orleans their home. We’d set a hard rule for the League to never go after non-native speakers. Those new to our language deserved to be cut some extra slack; English can still get difficult on me, and I’ve been using it my whole life. The spirit of TEAL focused on catching errors made by lifelong speakers, not by those who were still learning the basics.* In practice, this meant bypassing ethnic restaurants, stores, and sometimes even whole neighborhoods. Occasionally, though, we couldn’t even tell whether we’d run into a second-language situation. People don’t always fit into obvious categories. In those cases, more often than not, we stayed our pens.
Our clandestine campaign came to an end when I spied a blackboard typo that we had to bring to someone’s attention. We went inside Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, where the lifestyle embodied by the song could be supplemented by the purchase of faux-tropical tchotchkes. The store seethed with employees lacking an immediate purpose, so we figured that we could peel at least one off to grant the permission we desired.
A friendly guy in a festive shirt came over. “What can I do for you?”
“Hi,” I said, “we couldn’t help but notice that Thursday was spelled wrong on your blackboard outside. With