At Least They're Committed

No. It couldn’t be. I’d logged off Linked In as myself and then back on as someone else, thinking I would “Like” as someone more official a strand of communications I’d initiated last week and had added to minutes before. Logged on as Important, I moved the cursor to the conversation when, to my horror, in the text next to my mug shot was the word “towards.” “Dear God no!” I said aloud and with shaky hands failed in my first two attempts to log off as Important. I once missed the mistake — we live in America, it’s toward, not towards — in some copy I’d edited but I could not recall having made the mistake since my early years in journalism. Linked In gives you 15 minutes to edit your postings before they’re permanent. Frantic, I finally logged off as Important and, fingers quivering, got on as myself. What if someone were to see that? What if they just happened to be online and read the post? I was breathing heavy. Nine minutes left to fix it, the page said. I clicked on edit and went through it. There was no word ‘toward,’ let alone the wretched, British ‘towards.’ I ran a search for the word on the full list of postings and comments. It was there, sure enough, but it had been posted by another communicator. Not me. “Oh, thank God!” My sigh of relief was long and deep and must have shaken the walls in my home for it was soon after that Edisonsblackdahlia finally crawled out of bed and joined the living. “Toward,” I said to no one. “It’s toward, not towards, toward.”