dive into mark

My street sign is misspelled. I know this because, when we bought our house, I totally did not trust the builder (who was selling us the house, it was new), and during contract negotiations, I made him check the original survey map to see how the street was spelled. I guess I thought that he could use it to back out of the deal later; mostly I was just being paranoid and giving him a hard time. Negotiations lasted 7 hours. We arrived at the appointed time of 11 AM and left at 6 PM, signed contract in hand. We were both equally pissed by the end, which means the negotiation was a success. That’s a story for another day.

So anyway: my street sign is misspelled. It’s supposed to be spelled Forestcrest Court, but the sign says Forrestcrest Court, with an extra R. All the streets in our development have a forest theme. The development used to be a forest. I know of a place in Charlotte called The Arboretum; it’s a shopping mall. God knows what it used to be.

When we moved in, there was still a patch of forest across the street. One day they levelled it and started putting in townhouses. One day was all it took — actually just one morning. If I’d slept in I would have missed it. Not that I could sleep in, since they were levelling a forest across the street, and that’s, like, loud.

D was aghast to come home from work and find no forest. There was a forest when she left in the morning. In the evening, not so much forest. I reminded her that we were part of this problem too, we just hadn’t seen the forest that our house had replaced, since by the time we saw the house the first time, the house was already a house and not a forest. We have 16 trees in our backyard, ghosts of forest past. 15 trees; we lost one in the ice storm. Trees are like that; they don’t grow too quick.

Back to our street sign. I never thought anything of it being misspelled, other than being mildly amused by it and using it as a conversation starter with first-time houseguests, and occasionally wondering whom I should petition to get it fixed. I give out the correct spelling to anyone who asks, from Amazon to friends-and-family to the IRS. Mail gets through, packages get delivered. No problem.

Except that we’re the only ones on our street who spell it this way.

I found this out quite by accident, when we got a Christmas card from one of our neighbors, the ones with matching RAV4s in their driveway. His and hers. The return address spelled Forrestcrest with an extra R. Not just a hand-written address, mind you, but a printed label. It would be reasonable to assume that they are also giving out this spelling to Amazon, and friends-and-family, and the IRS. I checked around, casually, and they were not alone. In fact, we were alone. Everyone else spells it like the street sign.

Which is wrong.

Not just actually wrong, but common-sensically wrong. Nobody spells forest with an extra R, and none of the other street names have intentional misspellings. It’s not like the development used to be Forrest Gump; it used to be a fucking forest.

Plus, the post office agrees with me; enter Forrestcrest Court and it auto-corrects to Forestcrest Court. Who am I to argue with the post office? They keep track of this stuff for a living.

That reminds me of a story-within-a-story. Soon after we moved into our new house, I bought a grill as a birthday present for D. Not knowing the local stores yet, I bought it on Amazon and had it delivered. With large items (the grill was 140 pounds), they contract out to a third-party delivery company, whose name escapes me at the moment. There was some delay getting the grill, and I called Amazon to inquire. Apparently, this delivery company had failed to deliver my grill, for reasons unknown, and had simply given up without telling anyone. Amazon apologized profusely and gave me the direct number of the regional manager at this delivery company, who informed me, with no sense of irony or shame, that they had been unable to find my house, and could I please give him directions?

Now, when a pizza parlor can’t find my house, I am happy to give directions. After all, at the end of the day, they make pizzas, and only secondarily deliver them. But when a dedicated delivery company can’t find my house, how do they justify their existence? They don’t produce goods; they don’t market goods; they don’t sell goods. All they do is deliver. Extraordinarily poorly, as it turned out.

No word on whether it would have been easier for them if my street sign had been spelled correctly.

So here we are. And at this point, it occurs to me that a petition to change the street sign would likely be wildly unpopular with my neighbors. Never mind their embarrassment of having misspelled their own street name for years; there would be breakage. They would have to get their address labels reprinted. Update their Amazon profiles. Tell their friends-and-family. And somehow explain to the IRS that, despite not having moved, their address had changed. If that’s not a red flag for an audit, I don’t know what is.

Buttle, Tuttle.

I miss the forest too.