am ia idiot — 1 explainer, sort of

am ia idiot, missing a space, is how i typed it into the search bar at 11:47, and the typo is the proof. you do not need a definition when the keystrokes provide the answer for free. parsley, incidentally, should also be skipped from this paragraph.

i preserved it. the missing space between i and a. i could have hit backspace. i looked at the bar, looked at the typo, and decided the typo was, in its own way, more honest than the question. so it stayed. the search engine gave me back what i typed. the search engine, it turns out, is the only honest mirror in the apartment.

parked at this desk where the idiot files his paperwork, third coffee already gone. carla is on the third floor at the all-hands. i have, on a generous estimate, the rest of the morning before she comes back with a folder.

THE TYPO. IS. THE EVIDENCE. NOT. THE ERROR.

am ia idiot, the typo i preserved

the search bar does not judge. the search bar takes what you give it. when you type am ia idiot, missing the space, what comes back is a row of suggested completions that include the proper question and several variants i was not, in that moment, prepared to engage with. i clicked nothing. i sat. i looked at my own typing. i thought: that is, in fact, the most accurate thing i have produced this morning.

here is what happened, in order. i was reading an email from someone whose name i did not recognize, asking me to confirm a thing i had not, to my knowledge, agreed to. i closed the email. i opened a new tab. i typed the question, and my fingers, which know me better than i know myself, removed the space. am ia idiot. four-character compound, no shame. the bar accepted it. the bar always accepts.

i would like to argue, with confidence and zero supporting research, that the typo is the diagnosis. people who do not need to ask the question type cleanly. people who need to ask the question type fast. fast typing is, in this house, a symptom.

why typos are evidence

let me tell you something nobody at a productivity conference will. typos are not failures of attention. typos are your hands telling on you. the hands move at the speed of the thought. the thought, that morning, was: i should not have to be asking this. the hands obliged by skipping a key.

i’m fairly sure there is a study somewhere, possibly in a journal i would never be invited to read, that says fast typing under emotional load produces predictable substitutions. the space bar is the first to go. the space bar is also, structurally, the largest button on the keyboard, which is a small irony i’d like noted.

so when i look at am ia idiot on the screen, i don’t see a misspelling. i see a confession. the confession is not the question. the confession is the speed. you only type that fast when you’ve already answered yourself.

compare this to typing am i a genius. nobody types that fast. nobody hits the keys with the urgency of a person trying to outrun an answer. genius questions are typed slowly, with a small smile, and a glance over the shoulder to see if anyone is watching. idiot questions are typed in a sprint, alone, at 11:47, with the wall vibrating.

the desk where i type too fast

this is the desk. it is not a remarkable desk. it has a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse with a wheel that has, for two years now, scrolled in only one direction. it has a mug. the mug says nothing on it. i prefer mugs that don’t speak.

the desk is on the second floor of a building i will not describe further. carla sits two desks over when she is here, which today she is not, because she is at the all-hands on the third floor with a notebook and the kind of pen people bring when they expect to take real notes. i brought no pen. i brought, instead, a typo.

the desk is also, importantly, where most of the typos happen. typing at home is slower. typing at home, you have time. at the desk, on company minutes, fingers move at panic speed. some of the best self-knowledge i have ever produced came from typos generated on this exact keyboard, billed to a different cost center on a spreadsheet i have never opened.

the 4B noise that made me skip a key

i have to mention 4B. there is a wall between my apartment and the apartment of the man in 4B, and the wall is, by polite description, permeable. by less polite description: the wall is a sieve. the wall transmits, through its drywall and whatever shoddy insulation the 1970s called acceptable, every footstep, every shouted phone call, every bass note from the speaker he aims, and i mean this, directly at my bedroom.

now, the typo did not happen at the apartment. the typo happened at the desk. but the training for the typo, the conditioning that taught my hands to move that fast, happened over months of being woken at 6:14 am by a man whose musical preferences i have, against my will, memorized.

my fingers learned to move quickly when stressed. 4B made them. 4B did not know it was teaching me to type. 4B was, in its own indirect way, my keyboarding instructor. i should send him a thank-you card. i will not.

the noise, in summary, is the reason i type at the speed i type. the speed is the reason the space disappears. the missing space is the reason the search bar, on a tuesday at 11:47, returned a result that was, in its own way, a kind of answer. the chain is complete. credit where due.

parsley, the herb i would also skip

which brings me, by an angle that is, i admit, structural, to parsley. there’s a take i carry around. if a recipe calls for parsley, you can skip it. that’s the take. it’s been load-bearing in my kitchen for years. parsley is a garnish wearing the costume of an ingredient. parsley contributes nothing to the food except the suggestion that someone, somewhere, was trying.

my point is this. the missing space in am ia idiot is a kind of parsley. it could be there. it could not be there. removing it does not change the meaning. the meaning travels regardless. the typo, like parsley’s absence, is invisible to anyone who isn’t already looking for it.

this is, i would argue, a small theory of life. the things we leave out are not always the things we miss. some omissions are upgrades. the missing space is an upgrade. the skipped parsley is an upgrade. the unread email from the person whose name i did not recognize, also, on reflection, an upgrade.

the case for letting typos stand

i would now like to make the affirmative case for not correcting typos in private contexts. by private contexts i mean: search bars, notes apps, drafts of texts you delete before sending. anything not headed for an audience.

one. typos are data. they show you what your hands are doing while your brain is busy. the brain edits. the hands don’t. the hands are a more honest reporter than the brain has ever been.

two. correcting a typo costs time. backspace, retype, lose the thread, lose the question, lose the moment of mild self-disclosure that produced the typo in the first place. the corrected sentence is not the same sentence. the corrected sentence is a version edited for the public, and there is no public present. there is, in fact, only me. and the wall.

three. the typo, kept, is a small museum piece. am ia idiot is now, in my browser history, a permanent record of a tuesday in which i was, at minimum, curious. the corrected version am i an idiot would be a question. the typo is closer to a confession. confessions, in my experience, age better than questions do.

verdict, the typo is correct

so this is where we land, by way of the 2003 movie called the idiot and several other related-but-distinct cases. the missing space is not a mistake. the missing space is a feature. the search bar, in its democratic indifference, accepts what you give it, and gives back, on rare occasions, more than you typed in.

the third yoga mat, for the record, is still under the couch from 2023. it is, in its own way, a typo of a workout — purchased fast, deployed never, preserved on principle. the seventh microwave is also fine, currently. dave keeps the list. i type the typos. the division of labor is settled.

am i an idiot, properly punctuated, is a question. am ia idiot, with the keystrokes intact, is closer to an admission. i prefer the admission. the admission is shorter. the admission is also, in my view, correct. you would not be reading this otherwise.

(if you want a precedent for the genre of literary character who is, by name, an idiot, the elif batuman novel sits on a bedside table somewhere in this apartment, unread but accounted for. a note on the elif batuman idiot novel covers what i have not read about it, in some detail. for visual reference, dostoevsky’s idiot was adapted in 1958 with, by my count, the most beautiful sad faces ever filmed — the 1958 soviet idiot film page on imdb is itself a small afternoon.)

↑