The Intelligence Estimate

Shift.

There is nothing inherently funny about the word itself, but the misspelling of it is often hilarious.

Yesterday Jen came home and told me about a computer training that she had to do at work. It was after a long day on the floor (she's a nurse) and she was a little...punchy. Slap happy. Silly. And at one point the program asked her to type the word, "shift." She typed "shift," but the "F" did not register. She giggled and typed it again. Nothing. She nudged the nurse next to her. She giggled too. Jen typed again, again NO "f." She invited everyone within the sound of her voice to try to type it and it kept coming up wrong. They finally decided that the person who wrote the program was either really bored or 13 years old. Both are equally likely.

This reminded me of a story that ran in my hometown paper YEARS ago. When I was in 6th grade the elementary school decided to build a new playground. It was designed by a guy named Bob Leathers. Bob's shtick is that he comes to town and has a "meeting" with all the kids where he asks them what they want in their playground. These being kids of course they shout out things like, "a castle," or "a rocketship" or "a solar-powered hamster launcher." You know, crazy stuff. And Bob just smiles and nods while jotting down all of it and making ridiculous promises that could not conceivably be kept even if the resources and technology were available. (So we settled for coal-burning hamster launchers. Sorry Al Gore, looks like global warming is totally the fault of Grundy Center, Iowa!)

But here's the beauty of Bob's gig: he doesn't build it. The community does. He's just the pied piper of playgrounds. Bob comes to town on a cloud of promises, draws some crap and splits with sacks and sacks of cash. Then the town has to pull together to attempt to keep from disappointing the kids who were promised a dinosaur fighting a shark in a tank of Legos.

So the playground committee places an ad in the paper to drum up volunteers. It stated that you could contact the committee to sign up for a shift. THAT one was spelled right. This one wasn't: "We know once you've done one four hour shift you'll want to sign up for another."

It's amazing the playground got built at all.

Labels: Bob Leathers, Grammar, Jen, Playgrounds, Spelling