The Great Typo Hunt

by Jeff Deck

  “And they clearly have the ability to educate and garner attention. But to direct people, which it appears they have done, to actually vandalize public signs is crossing the line into the criminal arena, and hopefully they will not go down that route again.”

  The judge accepted the sentence and dismissed the second count against us, the actual vandalism charge. We’d have to meet with a probation officer. It was unsupervised probation, so we wouldn’t be getting visits from any officers; we just had to meet with one who’d go over everything with us. Then the judge had his say. “The Grand Canyon, in fact, most of our national parks are very special places. They have a tremendous influx of people, tourists year to year, and it is very difficult, simply because the number of feet on the ground, to protect them. But when individuals take it upon themselves to unilaterally affect what goes on simply because they think that—it’s rather egotistical on your part, simply because you think you know the English language better than others, to go around and force people to conform to what you think is appropriate.”

  Benjamin glared back at him, perhaps causing him to lose his next words. I just wanted it to be over. No, that didn’t characterize us correctly at all, but I didn’t want to argue. “We recognize that, Your Honor,” I said.

  “It’s kind of a crusade on your part, I can understand that. But now you see what’s happened as a result of your crusade.”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied.

  Benjamin offered no vocal response.

  “That was a course of conduct that you decided to engage in,” concluded the judge before moving on to the final details of collecting our social security numbers and the rest. By the time we’d gotten to that guilty plea, I’d thought that had already been covered when we accepted the terms of the plea agreement: Paying $3,035 in restitution and a year of probation, during which we were banned from typo correcting and all National Parks. My head spun as we wandered out. The bailiff arranged for our meeting with the probation officer at 2:00 p.m. It was the earliest possible meeting, but it’d leave us barely enough time to get the rental car back to Phoenix without incurring charges for an extra day. I’d hoped to be screaming southward within minutes of leaving the courtroom and checking out of the hotel. No such luck.

  I thanked our lawyer and shook hands with her. Her hand drifted toward Benjamin, but then dropped. He pointedly had not thanked her. He did not shake her hand. Once she’d walked away, he said, “Where’s a customer feedback card when you need one? I want my money back.”

  We stepped out into the bright glare of a day nearing noon, the August heat attempting to get its licks in ahead of a line of fast-approaching clouds. We went back to the hotel and changed into civilian clothing, and then we stuffed our faces with roast beef sandwiches and curly fries at Arby’s. As much as I protest the national landscape’s saturation with the same handful of restaurants and stores, sometimes you need the comfort of knowing exactly what you’re going to get.

  We examined and reexamined the papers we’d been given. The site would have to stay down, for safety’s sake. At every point when they’d mentioned us not correcting typos, both in the documentation and when the judge was speaking, they’d said directly or indirectly. They’d been targeting the website with that one. That’s what they’d meant when aiming at our First Amendment rights, but how far did it extend? Plus, even though the judge had specified “public signs” as government property, Benjamin and I considered the safest route was to avoid fine lines and lie low altogether. No more typo correcting, and no more website, at least not for a year. “There’s a clarity issue here,” Benjamin said, “and I’m not talking about the ‘resitution’ in the plea agreement. How far does all of this extend?” Was the First Amendment ban only for the probationary period? That wasn’t as spelled out as I’d like. We hoped the probation officer would be able to clarify some things for us. I was more concerned about the question of the National Park ban. It wasn’t as if they’d hang wanted posters in every ranger cabin. Really, they included that so that if we did something on their territory again, they’d be able to hit us double-hard. But I wanted to stick to the letter of the law. Before we’d arrived here, I’d asked both my own lawyer and the prosecuting attorney if either could supply me with a list of territories designated as the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. Parts of the Freedom Trail, which runs through downtown Boston, could have been included, so I’d have to tread carefully. Likewise, Benjamin could still go to the Smithsonian museums, but he couldn’t walk across the National Mall. No one ever obliged us with a clarification.

  At two o’clock we arrived at the probation office, upstairs in the same building as the courtroom, and began a long wait. As we sat there, Benjamin sank further into dejection. “Ahh well,” he said finally, “it’s not like I could have afforded the AT now anyway, thanks to the lawyer fees.” He’d put the Appalachian Trail off for a year for TEAL, but our ban from the parks extended into next August, way too late in the year to start. It had now been put off for two years, which is to say indefinitely. “That’s the worst part about this thing, man. I’m one of their people. No one goes outside anymore, and their budget is continually under attack. I want to be with them in this fight, but here they are wasting money on a federal court case against us instead of keeping the concealed weapons out.”*

  Our probation officer, Julie, finished with the previous perp and summoned us in. We’d filled out some paperwork in the waiting room, and she now wanted to make sure we’d seen the part about what drugs and alcohol we’d used in the previous year or so. We’d left mostly blank space there. That brought us the first laugh we’d had all day. Benjamin added, “If you knew us better, you’d understand. This whole situation … isn’t very us.” She recognized that she wasn’t dealing with hardened criminals and sailed us through the rest of the operation quickly and painlessly. Though she also didn’t have a list of what counted as National Park territory, we both felt better that we’d be coordinating restitution (sorry, resitution) through Julie’s office. Once we’d returned to the rental car, Benjamin held up her business card and declared that whenever possible, if he needed to check on anything, he’d definitely check with her first. Indeed, during our interactions with her over the next year, she remained as intelligent, professional, and helpful as ever. In our dismal experience with the court system, she was the shining exception, for which we very much thank her.

  We sped down to Phoenix, checked in the car, barred ourselves in a hotel room, and ordered a pizza. In the morning, Benjamin’s eye looked misshapen in a familiar way.

  “I cannot believe this,” he said as he grabbed a washcloth to put over his eye. “Now I’ve got a sty. I’ve never had a sty before. I’d never even heard of them until we got to Georgia!” Benjamin kept the washcloth as we left the hotel for the airport, adding theft to his rap sheet. The swelling had gone down by the time we touched down in Dallas–Fort Worth.

  We rode an escalator to the airport’s inter-concourse monorail. Benjamin, an inveterate train buff, was disappointed that he wouldn’t be riding it himself, as his next flight was a few gates away. He ensured the washcloth was in his left hand as he stretched out his right. “Well, have a good flight.”

  “Yeah, you too.” I’d already vaguely apologized, which he had brushed off, claiming I couldn’t have known this would happen and that he took responsibility for his own actions, along with other predictable rejoinders. Still, TEAL had been my mission, and my friend being punished too seemed to be the worst part of my own punishment. “We’ll figure something out.”

  “Yeah, we’ll be in touch, man. Lucky thing the bookstore took me back so I can pay my half off fast.”

  “Right. How are things back at the bookstore?” Toward the end of the TEAL trip, Jenny had called to say that the district manager he’d so disliked had quit, so Benjamin had wound up back at the same place.

  He shrugged. “I’d never been a training supervisor before, but I kinda like it.” My shu
ttle arrived. “It’s good to be surrounded by the books again, to know what’s out and what’s coming and what’s readable. Anyway.” He nodded to the opening doors.

  “Yeah. Have a nice flight.”

  “You too,” he said, already turning toward the escalator.

  That should have been the end of things for a while, but our punishment apparently was not complete. Knowing full well that our own First Amendment rights had been inhibited, the federal prosecutor’s office issued a press release, which led to a story in the Arizona Republic on August 22, 2008. The press release claimed we were “self-described ‘grammar vigilantes,’” so the Republic repeated the assertion with only minor alteration: “Two self-anointed ‘grammar vigilantes’ …” We had in fact never described (nor anointed) ourselves as “vigilantes.” But hey, the prosecutors knew they had a muzzle on us, so why not exaggerate the facts to make us into worthy villains? Accompanying the Republic article was the black-and-white photo of me from the complaint document; underneath the picture was Benjamin’s name. “According to court records, Deck and Herson toured the United States from March to May, wiping out errors on government and private signs.” Interesting, and here I thought we’d focused on public signs. Had we hit any other government signs? Had that Galveston security guard ratted us out for photographing the sign in front of the courthouse?

  All in all, they got the gist of the story, though. Who could fault them for fudging the details, especially when their source material was suspect? Commenters on the newspaper’s website suggested we be hired to help edit the paper itself. At least it was only a statewide rag. It’s not as if this story was disseminating nationally.

  Naturally, the Associated Press picked it up later that day.

  As news has increasingly twisted toward entertainment, there’s been a growing desire to open funny and close with a punchline at any cost. The AP story begins, “When it comes to marking up historic signs, good grammar is a bad defense.” The addition of the joke was about all they took the time to change from the Republic’s intro. The next line begins, “Two self-styled vigilantes …” They knew not to claim that we’d called ourselves “grammar vigilantes,” but they went ahead and charged us with full-on vigilantism. (Meanwhile USA Today, owned by the same conglomerate that owns the Republic, dutifully repeated the “grammar vigilante” meme.) But the AP did repeat the “government and private signs” bit. Their biggest addition, other than the description of the correction, was a new last line.

  While I’d waited for the prosecutor’s approval of the statement of contrition she’d forced us to write for the website, I had posted a quick announcement: “Statement on the signage of our National Parks and public lands to come”. The AP concluded its article by noting that our website contained only that message …“without a period.” Get it? The grammar guys forgot to punctuate their own sentence, hyuk hyuk. What baffles me is that someone at the AP apparently can’t differentiate a sentence from a nonsentence. My announcement followed the same conventions as news headlines, which do not take periods (e.g., an AP headline from that very day, “Seinfeld to be pitchman for Microsoft”). More specifically, you’d think that the AP would be familiar with the common journalistic placeholder “to come”. It even gets its own abbreviation in newspaper page galleys, marking places where text or photos will be filled in later: TK (no periods required for the acronym). When did reportage became synonymous with the cracks made by the class clown from the back row?

  Still, the AP had nothing on the professional loudmouths from cable news; Keith Olbermann ranked us as two of the worst people in the world. Olbermann was the master of ending on a punch line, favoring style over substance in a way that would make Hortense from Miracle on Main Street proud. A former producer for Walter Cronkite said once that Olbermann was “not a newsman. He’s not a reporter. I’ve never seen anything that he’s done that was original, in terms of the information. It’s all derivative.”* Which explains how, as a picture of us appeared, he said, “The silver [medal goes] to Jeff Michael Deck and Benjamin Douglas Herson, two self-proclaimed, twenty-eight-year-old grammar vigilantes—and you’d never guess it by looking at them.” There it was again, “self-proclaimed grammar vigilantes”—he’d yanked that misstatement right from the Republic piece. Having finished his rip ‘n’ read, Olbermann concluded in his own riotous way, “Our sources say the judge was also going to order them to get a life, but apparently it’s too late for that.”

  “Get a life? That O’Reilly wannabe needs to get a fact-checker,” Benjamin said.

  To be fair, the media couldn’t exactly ask Benjamin and me for clarification, never mind our side of the story. Our court-issued muzzles were firmly in place. Of the many stories about the case, however, not one bothered to include “before” and “after” pictures of the watchtower sign. A side-by-side comparison would have shown how tiny our correction had been.

  After temping around for a couple months, I found myself a new job in mid-September. Benjamin and his girlfriend decided to try life on the West Coast and began saving up. We paid our resitution with weeks to spare. As the weather turned cold, we settled into semi-hibernation. The country slid deeper into recession. For the first time, the guy we voted for won the presidency. We could do nothing but wait for the year to pass, but I knew I’d been onto something. On Inauguration Day I silently vowed that the president wouldn’t be alone in bringing change, even if I had to come late to the fight.

  TYPO TRIAL TALLY

  Total found: 3

  Total corrected:—1

  * Concealed weapons are now allowed inside National Parks. Any panther that tries to sneak up on your granny in a dark gully is in for a surprise.

  * The rest of the quote (this is from a New Yorker piece): “I like him, I agree with his perspective, and I think he’s very, very good on television. But he’s not a newsman. Ten years ago, if he had done at CBS what he does every day on the air at MSNBC, he would have been fired by the end of the day.”

  19 | A Place for Starting Things

  September 13–15, 2009 (Divers locations in and offshore from the Boston, MA, area)

  Our Heroes, post-probates that they are, return to the Quest once reunited. Out to sea and back to school, they race to wherever Adventure calls them as they begin the bold task of charting a Course for TEAL’s future exploits.

  Remarkably, neither of our girlfriends abandoned us for returning from Arizona as debt-saddled criminals. Then again, every girl loves a bad boy. More than a year after our courtroom debacle, when Benjamin and I finally received notice in the mail that our probation had ended and all our civil rights had been restored, Benjamin came to Somerville for a proper celebration. The visit wasn’t all champagne and cupcakes, for typo eradication is serious business, and we intended to pick up where we’d left off in May of 2008. We’d resurrect the website, and we would hold eloquent and furious discourse on the future of the League. First, though, we had one immediate thirst to quench. We decided, naturally, to visit the nearest National Park.

  Living in the Boston area had posed special perils for complying with the National Park ban, which encompassed historic as well as natural sites. Walk down any given street and you’ll inevitably blunder into a building that, 250 years ago, housed some fervid future hero with a blunderbuss and a dream. Did the Freedom Trail count as a national historical property? It’s literally a line painted through downtown Boston, snaking through the brick and cobblestone streets for more than two miles. Each time I came upon it, which was often, I found it necessary to vault over the line rather than touch it, just in case.

  But Queen Liberty had at long last planted her embrace upon our froggy mouths, restoring our sovereignty as whole citizens, who could tread whatever soil they pleased without fear of swift and bloody legal retribution. The Freedom Trail, Faneuil Hall, the Old State House, and various other historic and possibly nationally historic sites around Boston opened their arms out wide to me once more, but Benjamin and I de
sired to set foot in a true National Park, a natural setting rather than the constructions of ancient foremen. We decided on the Harbor Islands, thirty-odd patches of earth between here and Hull that had been collectively designated as National Park territory. Jane, an incorrigible outdoorswoman, happily joined our expedition. At noon on a fine September day, Jane and I bought our tickets at Long Wharf to travel to Spectacle and Georges, two islands in the collection that offered more to see than seagulls pooping on each other. Benjamin went to the window to claim his own, but as Jane and I walked toward the ferry, we heard a ticket agent proclaim that the ferry was now sold out. Had Benjamin made it? He sauntered over with a wry smile and an eyebrow waggle, holding up the last ticket. “You didn’t think they’d leave a gent like me behind, did you?” We boarded a packed ferry and squashed ourselves up against the railing.

  After a short ride, the dual mounds of Spectacle Island hove into view. We disembarked at the small, grassy island and found there to be little cover from the suddenly hot sun. Crickets sang their welcome. I regretted wearing jeans. Benjamin did not because he hadn’t actually packed any shorts. We stopped in at the visitors’ center near the pier to use the bathroom. Once we were back outside, Jane blinked in the strong light and turned to us. “Where would you guys like to go?”

  “How about the trail winding up the North Drumlin,” I suggested, pointing at the hill ahead of us, slightly larger and higher than the one at our backs. We headed up the path, alone now that the other visitors had scattered elsewhere on the island. Along the way to the North Drumlin, we stopped periodically to read signs that explained the history of Spectacle. It had indeed originally resembled a pair of spectacles, the northern and southern hills as two mismatched lenses with a narrower spit of land between them serving as the bridge. Now, with the spit thickened and expanded by additional landmass, the island looked mostly like a porkchop. I imagined that a corresponding name change would have been undesirable, though. Jane’s nose wrinkled as she read about what served as the foundation for that extra land.