Typo Hunt Across America

Somerville, MA

I had a going-away party at my house in Somerville on Saturday. Still not going to be leaving town for another nine days or so, but I figured best have the party before I start really obsessing over the last minutiae of preparations for the trip. I set up a Typo Creation Station in the living room, where guests could make their favorite typo and put it on the wall with sticky letters. Construction paper for cutting out states, real or metaphysical, was also provided. Some twenty-odd people showed up, and by the end of the evening the walls were covered with choice erroneous samples and all manner of bizarre cutouts. Needless to say, I was touched. I was even more moved by the well wishes and various offerings that my friends brought me to sweeten my months on the road. Now I have everything from a collection of comedic albums to a traditional hula-girl dash-enhancer to homemade road tunes to a ridiculously generous pair of gift cards that could serve well as bail should I occasion the wrath of some pastoral sheriff in the cradle of America. That’s one r and two f’s, mind you.

I started to think to myself what a fool I was for planning to leave these singular people behind for two and a half months, after I’d somehow been lucky enough to come into the grace of their friendship. And Jane for a month and a half, until I meet with her for our journey across the vast northern plains. Then my thoughts wandered to the even darker specter of what might happen if I only get into my grad school choices out in the far West. Yes, I always know what needs to be done, but that doesn’t make it any less wrenching. I understand, finally, how some folks, hell, many folks end up staying in the same area their whole lives. You draw the skeins of human connection about you until at last you feel that you belong. The fact that I’ve happened to fall in with people of remarkable warmth, humor, and generosity certainly doesn’t make it any easier.

But here is our chilly reality. I’m two days away from my twenty-eighth birthday, perilously close to the time when one must Get One’s Shit Together once and for all. This could be the last opportunity I have both the time and the funds for such a ludicrous adventure, before I go and really wreck my career for good. (Or, Inshallah, return to the snug bosom of academia for a spell.) This could also be the moment that I, and my illustrious companions in the service of TEAL, change the world. A fantasy, perhaps, but if the only way I have to make a dent in the world’s great hull of indifference is through alleviating a few verbal eyesores, then so be it.

So, my friends, I gots to do what I gots to do, but I’ll be back. And don’t believe for a hot second that I won’t be thinking of you all the while as I navigate the marvels and perils of this impossibly vast country.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 8:54 pm and is filed under *Trip preparation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.