The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [34]
“Got it. Do you have a red pen or red marker?” I asked.
“No …” She searched around the pamphlet stands. “No, I don’t believe I do. I can bring something in tomorrow from home, though. Just come back tomorrow and you can fix these.”
An earnest offer, not an attempt to get rid of us. But tomorrow night happened to be the first night I’d actually booked ahead, at a hostel in Lafayette. We said we’d hunt down a marker, a familiar mission that we hoped this time wouldn’t invite hailstorms.
“Okay, you can check the Walgreen’s up the street. You know, if you boys are looking for typos, you came to the right place. You’ll find them all over this town. Why, the other day I saw a big pink building with a yellow and blue sign, said WE SALE FISH. Now, what kind of sense does that make?” She proceeded to regale us with stories on every typo she had ever found throughout the watchful course of her life. I found it interesting that our mission would trigger such a monologue. Indeed, in other stops we made around the country, many people we met had typo tales of their own to share, usually unbidden. I think most of us must carry a kind of repository of errors noticed and internalized during a lifetime of bombardment by signs and ads and billboards and flyers. We may not even be aware of the repository until it is unlocked by the right stimulus—say, for example, a couple of yahoos walking around with elixir of correction.
Having a destination and directions for our marker-finding mission turned out to be helpful. I debated whether a red marker alone would be a sufficient enrichment of the Typo Correction Kit. Who knew what other hues a typo might choose to garb itself in? I ended up adding a whole rainbow’s array of Sharpies to my arsenal.
When we came back, we saw that the woman had some actual customers to attend to, sweaty Midwesterners manhandling the Segways. So we just went about our business. Benjamin and I pried the signs from the windows and laid them out on the flattest surfaces available. As I uncapped my elixir and red marker, the tour office manager paused in giving instructions to the tourists, as if she could smell fresh corrective fluid. She stared us down and said, “It better look good.”
Benjamin looked apprehensive at this sterner shade to the woman’s tone, but I felt confident in my altering abilities. I worked at the a first, blotting out the offending portions, then used marker to shade in areas that would complete the letter’s transformation to an e. I repeated vowel surgery on the other sign, and then we erected the beneficiaries of our handiwork, Benjamin climbing up on the windowsill to affix the higher copy. Once they’d been put back in place, the proprietor thanked us, noting that the signs looked great. A success story indeed, and one of my overall favorite typo corrections.
All in all, New Orleans was one of the most receptive cities to typo correcting that the League found during its entire journey. The employees we’d happened upon had demonstrated the most autonomy. A little faith in basic human judgment can do wonders.
TYPO TRIP TALLY
Total found: 50
Total corrected: 28
* Mallrats (1995).
* Granted, a good number of words stray from pure phonetic representation, but we’ll get to that in Chapter 13 and beyond.
* When I asked Benjamin what had induced his hysterics, he offered a story about autonomous action, RadioShack, and one of his favorite bands. Matthew Good Band, a Canadian rock group, had shot a video featuring a RadioShack logo and a scene inside the store. The general manager of that store—and fan of the band—even got a cameo in the video. The band had gotten permission, presumably via the GM, from the regional office. When the video came out,