The Great Typo Hunt_ Two Friends Changing the World, One Correction at a Time - Jeff Deck [7]
In late September a friend invited me to a party down in Allston, near Boston University. I almost didn’t go. It was an eighties occasion, and I had grown weary of such things, having already attended two eighties parties that year. Though I was a child of the decade myself, I never wanted to see parachute pants again. But I was always looking for excuses to talk about my impending mission, so at the last minute I threw on a Nintendo T-shirt and headed for the subway.
My friend greeted me at the door, wearing a dyed side ponytail, glammed-up eye shadow, and a tied-off Aerosmith shirt. Perhaps, I thought, I should have tried harder. She led me into the living room of her apartment, where the revelers had congregated. In the midst of them, a pretty, lanky brunette corralled chairs for guests. Like me, she had made little concession to the eighties part of the evening, opting for a jean skirt and tights. She threw me a thoroughly genuine smile with a goofy tinge, and I froze. My friend said, “Jeff, this is my new roommate, Jane! She’s from Maine!”
“Uh,” I said. All the glittering turns of phrase available to me had, in that moment, collapsed into a verbal slag. I had to tear myself away from those wide, warm eyes before I could regain conscious thought.
“Hi!” said Jane, taking my hand, which I had apparently extended.
It’s all in the opening line, I thought wildly. Snare her with a brilliant observation or offhand witticism, something that will, in ten words or less, perfectly position you as a captivator of mortal hearts, an unalloyed ingot of allure. What came out was: “What do you do?”
Jane responded by typing on an invisible keyboard in the air. A web designer, i.e., a geek girl. My heart soared still higher. Then she asked what I did, and I found my stride.
“At the moment, I am but a lowly administrative assistant,” I said. “But soon, very soon, I will be embarking upon a road trip to correct typos around the country!”
The room quieted. Or maybe I stopped listening to everyone else as I awaited her response.
“Sounds like a fun idea,” Jane Connolly said, tacking on an anime-character-like, high-register “uh-huh!” Dazzled by her gracious smile and those hazel eyes, I launched into how I envisioned the trip playing out, burnished with heroic embellishment here and there. She tossed me thoughtful questions, such as what tools I would need to bring with me, how I planned to deal with hostile reactions, and whether I would get people’s permission every time (I hadn’t even thought of that). I thrilled at her attention. She was really listening to me, I thought, not just waiting for someone handsomer or more interesting to wander her way.
I may have been flattering myself a tad. Asking a lot of questions, I learned later, was a common Jane tactic to mitigate her own shyness. She did loosen up after a while, though, and told me more about herself, about her favorite mystery books and her experiences at a women’s college in western Massachusetts. I ended up talking with her pretty much the whole party, and I snagged her phone number before I left.
We enjoyed two dates in downtown Boston during the next few weeks. On our third date, Jane came over to my apartment for Chinese dumplings and a screening of some embarrassing videos that I had made during a film course in college, including the adventures of the Phantom Purifier, a hygiene-obsessed superhero portrayed by me in a bathrobe with a tie around my head (also featuring Benjamin as my sidekick, the Soapy Ghost). Then we retired to my bedroom—to play the engaging card game Phase 10, of course. After a few strenuous rounds, we took a break, and Jane’s eyes wandered to that giant map of the U.S. over my bed. I’d slathered the map with a rainbow of sticky notes. Yellow ones indicated places where I knew people. Blue marked second-degree connections. Purple was for hostels. Most of the sticky notes lay along the circuit I’d be taking around the perimeter of the country.
“Dang,” she