| 0 comments ]

I have a real pet peeve about misspelled information on signs - ESPECIALLY business signs.

As we drive, I edit the signs that we see. There's one hand-painted sign not too far from our house that reads, Fresh cut wood hear. The people put this sign out every year. It drives me nuts. I've threatened spray paint editing after margaritas on the dock many a summer's night.

There's also a business that reads something like Flowers & Collectables (which may be some awful variant of Collectible, but it just seems PLAIN. WRONG.). (kind of like that ending punctuation)

When the sign guy stenciled gently used books on the window of our bookstore, he inverted the l and t into genlty. I went INSANE. I actually covered it with a piece of printer paper until he could get out to fix it. To me, tackiness wins out over spelling something incorrectly any day.

Those are all nice stories, but the one that takes the cake is all on us him.

We have a huge lighted sign way, way up on our building at the bookstore. The sign has space at the bottom for us to put up messages (you know, those pain in the butt slide-in letters on business signs). We change the lettering depending on event - scratch that - TODD changes the lettering because of the ladder/balancing/height requirement.

One day, I handed him a note that had the message spelled out. We couldn't fit the author's entire name, so we were just going to put Author Event and then the date. On the way out of town, we swung by the store because I had forgotten something. LOW AND BEHOLD? Up there, on MY BOOKSTORE SIGN, was the following:

Authur Event 6/21

AUTHUR.

I get in the car. Much arguing finger pointing discussion ensued. To this day, he swears that I spelled it that way on the piece of paper I handed him. To which I reply several things:

1. As a published AUTHOR, I can see why I would spell it wrong.
2. Even if I did have a momentary lapse of, um, all that encompasses who I am, you still didn't know author was spelled with an O?!?

Fast forward a few months to last night:
Somehow this topic came up when our friend was with us. Believe it or not, Todd still won't relinquish. His unyielding position is STILL that I spelled it wrong (I know, who can believe). To which our friend said?

"Dude. Don't ever tell that story again. Even if she is the one who spelled it wrong, you still look like the dumbass."

Thank you. Thank you very much.
Vindication is sweet.

0 comments

Post a Comment