I’ll admit it: I have a disorder. If I’m handed a sheet of paper filled with text, the typographical and spelling errors will typically leap off the paper, grab my me by the ears, and divert my attention toward themselves. It’s like putting on a pair of 3D glasses. It’s a suitable disorder, as I’m a proofreader and former city & county Spelling Bee champion. Sometimes I find some fun ones, like the sign above.

I derive no glee from pointing out the typos of others. While I don’t believe in karma, typographical or otherwise, I can’t help but wonder if I’m about to make a similar mistake while writing about the errors I find. Uh oh. It is 2:45 in the morning, after all (I woke up hungry). Is it unreasonable, however, to expect schools and learning centers to proofread their signs for obvious spelling or punctuation errors? I think not.

This reminded me of something I spotted a week or two ago, as I was hiking back from what used to be Hillside Park. While attempting to approach the top of the “park” I figured that the best I could do was to park in St. Mary’s Cemetery and hop the fence. On the way back to the truck I got an eerie feeling. My “spider-sense” was kicking in, so I stopped and turned slowly. Yep…there it was: a typo.

I’ve intentionally obfuscated the name on this stone, which actually sits in the middle of several markers of the same last name. Since I pretty much have a King James Bible handy as often as I do my camera bag, I grabbed one and compared the text on the stone to Psalm 107:

He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions. (v20)
Uh oh. The stone clearly says “DESTRURTIONS.” Dang.

Well, I’m sure I’ll go ahead and make a ton of typographical errors now. Feel free to point them out. I’ve earned it. While I don’t believe in “typo karma” I do have a strong appreciation for irony! In the mean time, I’ve shoveled enough Frosted Flakes into my head to choke a donkey…and now it’s time to return to bed.

UPDATE: We have a winner! Kudos to my friend Ken, who spotted a typographical error in the very first paragraph of this post (and called to verify that I didn’t plant it there on purpose). I didn’t remove it; rather, I just put a line through it and corrected it for the world to see. See? No one is immune from the sinister typo…especially those of us who point them out in other people’s work!

Dawn found the second one. Sigh…