the audacity of spelling

While crashing in Boston until my apartment is ready in New York (I somehow have a claim on an affordable room right near Columbia Med School, thanks mostly to Adrienne), I've been passing the time with a lot of editing. And because I have a borrowed bike, a fantastic Australian messenger bag, and a fearlessness borne of cycling the streets of Amsterdam, I do much of that editing at Toscanini's in Central Square.

Perhaps the best way to describe the clientel of Tosc's is to relate this exchange, overheard today between a patient young mother and her ice cream-covered five-year-old:

Child (reading a poster on the wall): I... F... F...
Mother: Good! That stands for "International Film Festival." They show lots of movies from all over the world. What's that next word?
Child, haltingly: B... O... S... T... O... N.
Mother: Do you think you can you sound that word out, Abby? It's a word you know.
Child, at once, triumphantly: Barack Obama?!
Mother: Nnnnnnooo.