The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [41]
Since we’d covered Albuquerque last night, Santa Fe would be the site of our hunt today. After a gorgeous drive between the sibling cities, we came upon a town plaza with a row of shops leading to a central square, which boasted America’s “oldest continuously used public building” and the towering Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi. A stroll along the shops seemed in order. Continuing on the morning’s theme, we made a turn down Burro Alley, where we spotted our first ill-begotten sign. In the window of an otherwise friendly little French café, a sign commanded, NO SMOKING ARE DOGS ALLOWED.
This amused Benjamin to no end. He’d spend the rest of the day playing with equally inappropriate word substitutions. “Dude, how about ‘No smoking our dogs allowed.’” His mood crashed, however, when I declared that we weren’t going to fix it. I pointed to my explanation before he could burst into a demand for one: the next three windows sported the same sign, but in those three the word ARE had been replaced with an even bolder OR in marker thick enough to make the two letters cover the three. Crude, but effective. Someone had already recognized the error and corrected most of the signs, so it seemed pointless to bother, at least to me.
Benjamin growled, then replied in staccato, “But. They. Still. Missed. One.”
I resisted further, but this was mutiny, and Mr. Christian demanded I surrender to him my marker and elixir. Then he went into the café, somehow slipped past the host, and ducked into the room with the window that the original corrector hadn’t remembered to visit. The fix happened fast, and after making sure the elixir had dried enough to not stick to the window, he reattached the sign and swung back out of there before anyone could comment. As we walked back the way we’d come, Benjamin broke the silence by offering, with a nod at the street marker, “What can I say? I’m just that stubborn.” The sign of the donkey. Or was I the ass? “And Jeff—no smoking dogs allowed!”
I tried to make up for my malaise with the next one, sticking to my Sharpies over the initial irritation of the local bookstore employees. Feeling like an adventurer who’d recovered a stolen artifact thought lost for good, I returned the apostrophe to its rightful place in a sign for Barron’s magazine. Strangely, something about the scene shifted. Happy as I’d been at my restored treasure of an apostrophe, I found myself caught off guard as a shadowy figure began to prowl the corners of my consciousness—not the apostrophe thief, but a similar, internal scoundrel with the potential for greater mayhem. I couldn’t get a clear view, but I sensed its identity: doubt. Quiet, tentative, but nevertheless substantial doubt. If I tried to ignore it, the troublesome notion would sneak into backstabbing distance, dealing a critical hit to my confidence in the mission. Yet I couldn’t catch it, the rogue dancing out of reach when I spun and lunged.
I stood outside staring back at the storefront for a moment, making the employees within fear that this mooncalf would be bothering them with oddball requests all day. Despite the rudeness I’d encountered, first by the younger clerk who thought I’d wanted an issue of Barron’s and then by the older one, who’d given me the go-ahead to fix their sign with a hearty “whatever” to get rid of me, the place had an honest feel to it. A local little bookshop for people who actually read.
Benjamin nearly walked on without me before he noticed how I’d gotten stuck. “I liked that bookstore,” I said.
He agreed. Nice place. Moving along …
But I couldn’t. Something felt wrong about me or my mission, or both. Some contradiction between my feelings and actions. As we explored further, the thief at my heels continued to harry me with light fingers, challenging the preconceived notions I’d held when I saddled up for this adventure. Oh, but if I could stand here a moment more, I’d have it figured out!
Alas, not yet.