A Spooky Spelling Variation

Earlier this month, my friend Lindsay visited the Live Oak Canyon Christmas Tree Farm and Pumpkin Patch in Redlands, California, to find the perfect pumpkin in the farm’s U-Pick field. (You can read about her day, with its cornucopia of fall-themed fun, here.)

Lindsay’s trip benefitted both of us. She got her pumpkin in the patch, and I got a pumpkin sign in need of patching.

Today’s song and dance concerns an unusual absence in the VARIETIES show. Dispense with the theatrics, you say? Fine.

LiveOakCanyon.com

Variety is the (pumpkin) spice of life. Sometimes. Not when it comes to spelling. The word VARIETIES always has been, and always will be, spelled with nine letters. Unlike a witch, we can’t cast different spells. Someone at Live Oak Canyon did, squashing a letter. The first E, like the Great Pumpkin, failed to materialize. I don’t see it in the middle, which is why I see IT in the middle. I don’t like it. If you do, you’re out of your gourd.

VARITIES and VARIETIES are virtually the same. Virtually. Not entirely. VARITIES varies from VARIETIES, marring its veracity. That is verity.

When she wasn’t picking a pumpkin, my IAMNOTASTALKER friend Lindsay was stalking the corn stalks of the farm’s a-maize-ing labyrinth for an exit. It took her two hours, and she took a few wrong turns in the cornfield, but she made it through unscathed. I can’t say the same for the sign’s creator. He neared the very end, with the finish line in sight, but hit a rough, ahem, patch and failed to carve two E’s in VARIETIES.

Amazing.