I Painted "Taco Tuesday" and Misspelled It (And I'm Leaving It)

I painted this one after a fish taco run that didn't need to be anything special. Avocado sliced into fans, a little dish of guac and pico, jalapeños and cilantro scattered across the table like they always end up, a cold Pacifico standing guard next to the plate. The ingredient list I scrawled in the corner says it best: fish tacos, a cold beer, time to linger. That's the whole afternoon, really.

I lettered "Taco Tuesday" in big script down the side, the kind of flourish I love adding to these food pieces. I sat with this painting for weeks. I posted it. I looked at it more times than I can count.

Then a friend looked at it and said, "wait, is that supposed to say Tusday?"
It is not supposed to say Tusday. It says Tusday.

I went back and stared at it like the letters might rearrange themselves if I waited long enough. They did not. Somewhere between the E and the S, my hand just skipped a step, and my eyes skipped right past it every single time after that.

Here's the thing I keep coming back to. I make this art by hand, with ink that doesn't undo and paper that doesn't forgive. No spell check, no layers, no command Z. That's exactly why people connect with it. The wobble in a line, the ink that bleeds slightly past where I meant it to stop, a word that's missing a letter because I was thinking about lunch and not lettering. That's a human being making something, not a machine generating it.

So I'm not fixing it. Tusday it is. If anything, it might be my favorite kind of mistake now, the kind that proves a real hand was holding the pen.

If you've spotted a typo in your own life, in a sign, a tattoo, a text you sent your boss, I would love to hear about it. Misery loves company, and so does mine.