Sqaur* (for Squar*)

I grew up watching Sesame Street in the 1980s, and so I learned their parody songs, featuring letters, numbers, shapes, colours, and (of course) puppets, long before I ever knew the "real" classic rock hits.

One of my favourites was "It's Hip to be a Square", which twisted the lyrics of the Huey Lewis song, "It's Hip to be Square", and features squares, rectangles, circles, and triangles dancing and singing. It can still be found on YouTube, in all its glorious '80s animation, teaching tolerance:

When I go to the playground
And a triangle says 'How do you do'
Then comes in a circle
And a rectangle shows up too

Well I play with the triangle
And the circle can join the game
I play with the rectangle
Who cares that we're not all the same?

Of course, while tolerance for nonconformity is great on the playground, you have to watch out for it in the library catalogue: sqaur* is a moderate probability typo on the Ballard List.

(Square image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Leanne Olson