The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [46]
At Benjamin’s urging, I again put my Rocks & Minerals experience to the test at a gem shop. As in Santa Fe, I ended up catching a vowel in distress (“hemitite” rather than hematite, wouldn’t you know), and again I couldn’t keep myself from purchasing something nifty. Benjamin practically bounced as we caught the typos offhandedly, periodic discoveries during our exploration of an authentic community of artists and artisans. “I could live here! I’ve gotta come back with Jenny.”
We treated ourselves to a nice Italian restaurant, where a kid’s (not kids’!) birthday party sent the sole waiter scurrying to keep up. I, of course, found our ninth error for the day on the menu. When I showed it to Benjamin, he shrugged and said, “We’re eating here. Maybe … we should forget it. I mean,” and here he indicated the table filled with shouting children, “he’s got a lot on his mind already.”
“No, we’ve got to at least tell him,” I argued, and Benjamin smiled.
He’d been testing me. “You’re back.”
I thought he meant my frustration the day before, but he traced its roots back even further. “You went up an employee-only ladder in Austin. I stood on your car to get one in Fort Stockton, right after you made a big X on the side of a building. We’ve gotten bolder, taking on big errors.”
I saw it immediately. I’d gotten bored with small-fry typos. El Paso hadn’t featured anything big enough to stack up. The constant, lengthy driving and blogging had added to it all, and I’d begun to burn out. Benjamin had noticed it in Albuquerque, of course. We’d stumbled on the Kelly’s/Kelley’s sign, an error a bit too high to correct, and I’d shut down and said forget it. But Benjamin, donkeylike to the end, hadn’t been dragged along on this crazy adventure only to let me abandon it. He’d committed to it somewhere along the line, and he’d charged forward, perhaps fueled by his anger at me for giving up. “Your whole thing yesterday,” he said now, “that would have been an excuse.”
“But it was a valid point.”
“That typos are part of small-town character? That’s condescending. Typos aren’t charming. Misspellings are not the source of their independent spirit. These guys are fighting for their lives in a bankroll-obsessed, corporate-leaning America that’s eight years into an administration that gives handouts to the big guys for successfully crushing anything in their paths. You’re not hurting the little guys; you’re helping them by leveling the grammatical playing field.”
How could I have forgotten that? I’d been trying to define the whys of my mission ever since Jane had asked me at my going-away party. Somewhere along the line I realized that—unfairly or not—stores and their products would be judged by their presentation. That included grammatical correctness. The big-box stores used professionally made (and edited) signs to enhance the visual appeal of their stores. The little guy printed something out and taped it to the tables, walls, or windows. They started out at a disadvantage, but a grammatical error could set them even further behind. No matter how many clichés warn us against it, we are visually oriented creatures, and we do judge the books by their covers. By checking over their signage, we could help the independents ward against negative judgments, perhaps adding a small measure to their perceived legitimacy.
Meanwhile, even amid my crisis of faith, we’d been getting better at this. The lesson here wasn’t merely about whom to help, but where we could get better hunting done as well. Today we’d found an all-time