The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [6]
Sometimes, in the oft-long stretches between seeing each other, I kind of forgot what Josh was like in person. His online persona became the reality, a living screen name that hid the red-haired, bespectacled figure typing away behind it. To some extent, we are our own text, which is why my mission would be important—erroneous signs confer their blemishes on their very owners. Still, the images we project with IMs and social network profiles are hardly a substitute for genuine, three-dimensional people.
After I’d finished describing my proposed journey, Josh was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Oh my god. You’ll be killed within a week.”
I feigned indifference, trying for a different angle of appeal. “Probably, but it could at least be funny.”
“Okay, I do find unintentional misspellings funny,” Josh allowed. “I saw a diner calling itself the ‘All Night Dinner’ once, but I can’t remember where.”
Yes, I thought, come along for the yuks if you must. Once we were on the road, carrying out actual corrective action, I could train him to focus on the higher goals of the journey. Right now I only had to get him into the passenger seat.
“Who are you road-tripping with?” he asked.
“Whoever wants to come along,” I said. Then, cautiously: “So … are you in?”
“Definitely!” he fired back, to my delight. “I’ve never been to the West Coast. I want to do the leg of your trip that’ll encompass Los Angeles to Seattle. I’d even go up to Vancouver if that were possible. And hey, when we’re in L.A., I can network.”
Josh worked as a film editor and production assistant in New York. He had some decent gigs with commercials and friends’ projects, but I could picture the greater opportunities that Left Coast connections could produce. Judging by the high-quality editing that I’d seen him do, he deserved a shot at loftier glories. I imagined he would bring the same exacting discipline to interstate traveling. True, now that I reflected on our past adventures, Josh could also be obnoxious sometimes, but I figured that would be a plus in places like L.A.
We discussed the financial considerations. Money would be tight for him. Living from gig to gig takes a dire toll on one’s bank account. I’d lit the watchfires of the idea in the turrets of his brain, though, and he would not see them extinguished for anything.
“I may have to live off ramen, but I will make it happen,” said Josh.
Now both Benjamin and Josh were on board—no longer would I be a lone typo maverick. We were a team, and we needed a catchy name. Something that captured the scope of our ambitions and that would also look great on a T-shirt. Something like TEAL: the Typo Eradication Advancement League.
Autumn fell, and I discussed my ambitions openly and frequently now with friends, family, and hapless seatmates on the subway. Their questions helped me realize that typo described some of the errors I would be looking for, but not all. Some errors would be caused by ineducation, not carelessness. Some errors would be scrawled by hand, not typed. They were all worthy quarry, so I would expand the definition of typo for my purposes, to include all types of textual errors. I had emerged from the typo-hunting closet. I began to set up tentative sofa-surfing arrangements with people I knew in various corners of the country. It turned out there were certain geographic limitations to the Jeff Deck social network. I had the West Coast, the Midwest, and the Northeast/East Coast pretty well covered, but there’d be giant housing gaps in the South, the West, and the Great Plains. I needed cheap shelter options or I’d burn through my travel stash in a hurry, so I picked up a guide to reputable U.S. hostels (it was a short book) and Benjamin