Whoever planted this sign in my hometown must despise me. It’s there, taunting me every time I drive from my mom’s house to my brother Joe’s house: “Melody, look at me! Does the fact that IDOT didn’t put proofreading into the sign-making budget drive you crazy?” YES. IT’S DRIVING ME FREAKING INSANE! It’s MA-roa. Not MO-roa. GOOGLE IT! Google would have said, “Did you mean: Maroa, IL” and then poor little Melody would not be having nightmares about signing my initials on a proof that has a glaring typo on it. *shudder*

P.S. I will never again see this sign. The sign on the West side of Clinton says that MAROA is 10 miles away. I don’t mind the extra miles if it means avoiding that sign.

Prologue: Today’s most poetic blog post comes from the world-renowned Graphic Designer most commonly known as Q. Because of this, I wanted to first apologize for his inadequacy when it comes to writing. My suggestion for you would to be just grin and bear it, as that is what we have found works best with Q.

Normally I let text message failures roll off my back, as I understand that little keys and being in a hurry to send your next witty message will inevitably end in failure on the sender’s part. However there is one person that I cannot let this go on: her name might be Melody Alexander Stanbery. Wednesday June 3rd I got this little gem of a text message from one Melody Alexander Stanbery.

“Sorry. I got sidetracked wolfing down my burger. You’re lucky you didn’t get between or and me.”

I will go ahead and label this one under predictive text fail and failure to proofread.

Epilogue:

From Q: “I’m sorry for trying to be a writer. I will never try to write a blog post again.”

From Melody: “I Melody Alexander Stanbery promise to never let Q write another blog entry again.”

Footnote: This portion really is from Melody. Please note, not only have I have officially learned never to text and not proofread again, but I think Q did pretty well for his first blog. And just FYI, that was one tasty burger, and it may have possibly caused my inability to text properly. Because those of you who know me are quite familiar with my “frick” correction texts that follow typos. Kudos to Q for calling me out at my own game. 

Oh, I know. Apostrophes are hard. Especially when you’re really under pressure from your boss to make sure that fish looks great in Day-Glo. Sure, I laughed off the fact that you carefully painted two apostrophes into the ginormous Lent ad for Big Fish Fridays. But then you had to go and paint the first apostrophe upside-down, and that just doesn’t make sense. (And just one last thing: it’s generally ’til or till. Not til. Boo.)

I am quite speechless. I could make so many jokes. Instead, I think I’ll just sigh and remember why I dreaded having to go to Havelock when I lived in North Carolina. If it wasn’t for friends like Shannon, Katie and Stacy who actually lived there, and the fact that I was able to buy super cheap surfer chick clothing at Cherry Point — and OK, having to pass through Havelock to get to the beach, too — I think I’d avoid it like a sale of plagues (please see February 26th post). Thanks, Shannon, for keeping your eyes peeled so we can laugh together!