I’m Zorro, only with a Sharpie.

The first time was at Home Depot.  I stood in line, waiting to make a return, when I was assaulted.  The sign said something like, “Bring you’re return’s to the front counter.”

I tried to ignore it.

Really. 

I looked the other way.  I attempted to think of some fashion in which the sentence, as written, might be coherent (there is none).  I prayed for the person whose life is such that they have no respect for the apostrophe.  Finally, I broke.  I took a Sharpie from the Customer Service counter and went to work.  With a few strokes of the pen I alarmed the Customer Service person and restored peace to proponents of proper punctuation.

I do things like that.  I perform acts of grammarfitti, and I am not ashamed.

I consider it a mission, of sorts.  Our society has become so language lazy that we are balanced on the brink of communication chaos.  Someone with the skill to do so must intercede on behalf of the people.  Someone must stand in the grammar gap.

I shall.

This profound purpose was born from a simple act of omission.  Consider the Henderson Family (name changed to protect the ignorant).  They started a small business in my town—we’ll call it a real estate office.  Knowing the value of advertising, the Hendersons decided to purchase space on a bus stop kiosk.  These mini billboards are very visible as you drive up and down the boulevard and can be quite effective.  So, the Hendersons hired a company to create a sign for them.  At some point they must have proofed the copy and approved it.  They paid for the sign, and paid to have the sign posted.  Their billboard read, “Buying?  Selling?  For all your real estate needs, come see the Henderson’s!”

The Henderson’s what?

For that matter, which Henderson?

You see my predicament, don’t you?  How could I let this family business go under, simply because of punctuation?  Because one of two messages is being conveyed by this sign:

1. We didn’t notice the mistake.  Oops.  Now, come let us handle your multi-hundred-thousand-dollar home purchase, with over a hundred pages of documentation to proofread.  It’ll be fine.
2. We don’t understand how apostrophes work.  Come trust us with the biggest purchase of your life and find out what else we don’t know.

Surely you understand. And yet, I balked at the idea of fixing the sign.  It would be defacing property, I rationalized.  It would be illegal.  Besides, it was none of my business.

I chose not to get involved.

To this day, I am wracked by guilt at the thought of the pain, the loss, the suffering that has undoubtedly resulted from this mistake that I could have remedied, but didn’t.  I vowed that it would not happen again.

I have become bold over the years.  With a Sharpie in hand and a bottle of white out in my pocket, I am making the world a more comprehensible place.  Even the public schools are not safe from the danger of miscommunication.  Consider the sign, “Boy’s Bathroom,” which I discovered at a local school.  Which boy?  Why does one boy get his own bathroom, and how do you choose that boy?  Is it like a special parking space for the Employee of the Month?  And what are the other 500 boys supposed to do?

A splash of white out, a slash of the pen, and catastrophe is averted.

It’s not only apostrophes, of course.  Consider the unintended horror that can come from something as simple as a forgotten comma:

I’m hungry.  Let’s eat, Grandma.

I’m hungry.  Let’s eat Grandma.

Will you really allow society to descend into the nightmare of cannibalism because you refuse to pick up a pen and get involved?  Join me in this mission.  Become a grammarffiti artist.  You will not be alone.

Ill lead you.

Oops