Misquotes

Some of my favorite stories are those of title confusion. I don't correct adults when they mispronounce a book title or author but I have enough maturity to correct the youth who mangle the names of literature's finest and really don't embarrass them. It wasn't me but another women in the store who did one of the fastest accurate guesses I ever heard. A father comes up to the information counter and tells the clerk he needs "Cranberry Story" for his son for school. Our diligent clerk enters the supposed title into the computer and gibberish comes up, nothing that resembles school required reading. She stops for a minute, looking at the screen, and asks the gentleman, "Did you mean the Canterbury Tales?"

" Yeah!! that's it," he exclaims.

Just one more, this actually happened just yesterday. We live in a very culturally diverse area, which is a good thing but it can make communication a challenge at times. A middle aged gentleman with a very strong accent, which I could not accurately identify, approached the help desk. "I would like 'you're not unfrozen freedom', that is the title" I was sure my ancient ears were deceiving me so I asked him to repeat himself.

"You're not unfrozen, freedom, that is the author"

I tried the computer but knew GiGo was in effect, and worked for clarification. "You're, like You Are?"

"Here let me write it for you" he said, and I thanked God.

Jono_ton Frozen Freedom is what he wrote and pointed out that "Freedom" was the actual title. Had I been a regular reader of adult books I most likely would have gotten it at this point, but I read kid books, so I continued my search and discovered a new soon to be published "Freedom" by Jonathan Frazen, success.