Whx no
“Y”s
The Neonatura Fern wishes you Happx Holidaxs!
There's a middle school near us that we pass by frequently — in fact, back in the day, we went to school there ourselves. A few years back, they installed one of those lighted signs that takes plastic lettering for posting announcements — parent teacher conferences, that sort of thing. One evening several years ago, we were driving by the school and saw a rather interesting display, which looked something like this:
Happx Holidaxs!
Since we assumed that the teachers at the school actually knew how to spell, this message was something of a conundrum.
The situation became even more mysterious when, the next day, the sign clearly said
Happy Holidays!
I speculated that perhaps someone had fixed the sign — but the next evening, “Happx Holidaxs!” was back again.
Further investigation revealed the secret. Evidently the school had run out of “y”s for the sign (buy a vowel already!), and had substituted capital “X” instead. To make them look like “y”s, the school used white-out to paint over the lower right portion of the “X”. This worked fine during the day. But at night, the back-lit letter still blocked the light in the shape of an “X”.
We thought the whole thing was hilarious, and apparently the school does too, because the “Y-less” messages because a standard thing in the following years. I fully anticipate that once the winter break begins in the local school system, we'll once again be wished a “Happx Holidaxs!”
So here's “season's greetings” from Neonatura to you and yours this holiday season:
Happx Holidaxs — and a Happx New Xear!