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By Root 452 0

the hidden host of the grammatical divine awaited her verdict. She gave Benjamin a look like he was trying to trick her, so I added, “Look at the other words. They have dots between their syllables, too.” Oh, I’d been right about my opinion of her spinning around when she reached for that dictionary. Unfortunately, it had spun a full three-sixty. I would like to applaud her decision to bring the dictionary in as the decider, but at least a passing familiarity with how a dictionary works would be helpful. The worst part, and we couldn’t have known this at the time, was that she wouldn’t be the last person we’d encounter who’d been smart enough to reach for a dictionary but then failed to be informed by it.* The bitter irony of being in this educational store with an employee who’d never been properly introduced to the dictionary was not lost on me.

“Oh, all right,” she said finally, “but that still doesn’t mean this is wrong.” She gestured toward the sign.

Time to roll out the rusty old gimmick. “We’re going around the country correcting typos,” I began, and asked if perchance we could …

“No.” Emphatic, like scolding a toddler with an uncapped permanent marker who was heading for pristine walls.

I couldn’t let this one go. I just couldn’t, and I used the reason I couldn’t let it go as my next argument. “We were thinking that since this store has an educational bent, you’d appreciate knowing about these typos, and that we could help out by fixing them.”

“No, you cannot. My boss wouldn’t like it. The corrections wouldn’t look good.”

At this point, another employee decided to join us. The first woman showed the newcomer the sign and explained that these two boys claimed that “year around” wasn’t right. “It isn’t right,” she replied. “It should be ‘year-round.’”

“And I was saying that it might be a pun.”

“… maybe.”

“They were also saying that ‘in doors’ was a typo.”

“It is. It should be ‘indoors,’ one word.”

At long last! She’d finally gone to a source of recognized authority who had issued a definitive confirmation of our claims.

I tried to address the second woman, in the hopes that she could take over. “Can we fix these for you?”

“Well, I don’t know. What did Hortense* say?” Uh-oh, she’d deferred back to the first woman. What was it with the reluctance to take authority here?

“I told them no,” she said, as if that were the end of it. As if she hadn’t been telling us no because she’d thought the sign was right. Then it occurred to me that perhaps she hadn’t been telling us no because the sign was right. That she’d been claiming the sign was right to make it easier to tell us no. I pushed that thought away—I couldn’t face what it implied. Perhaps knowing that I was about to ask her to reconsider, given her co-worker’s opinion, Hortense intoned, “I would rather have a sign spelled incorrectly than a tacky-looking sign.”

Benjamin, who’d moved to the side at some point, pulled out his poetry notepad. He wrote down that resonating, cynical statement word for word so that we’d have it later for the blog. It had a compelling meter to it, I had to admit. And as good poetry can, it transcended the moment and spoke for more than the PLAY IN DOORS sign. In that moment, Hortense spoke for many like-minded people, all those who emphasized style over substance, appearance over accuracy. I nodded. In the end, she’d managed to impress me after all—impress a fist right into my gut.

“That’s a good line,” I said, and we left.

“So much for an educational store,” Benjamin said as soon as we’d hit the sidewalk. “‘I would rather have a sign spelled incorrectly than a tacky-looking sign.’ Wow. That’s deep.”

“It does tend to sum things up, doesn’t it?” Indeed, that concern had prevented us from winning permission a number of times. God forbid anyone should see evidence of an error corrected. You’d hardly appear infallible by not correcting the error. Ahh, but the correction, if not done to blend in perfectly (as I always strove to do), would draw attention to what most people might not otherwise notice. You could get away with it.