Granted. But no one knows of the change but you.

You laugh each time you see the odd spelling. You even bring it up to some people, swearing it used to be “potato,” not potayto. But people don’t believe you. Or they say something like: Well I never knew how to spell Berenstein Bears. I used to think it was Berenstine Bears. So it’s kinda like that, eh?

Except it’s not, you claim. There was a monkey’s paw. I wished for potatoes to change! You even pull out an empty bag of chips from your life before the wish. They just snort. Hey that’s a funny misprint. You become frustrated by this small shift in reality only you know to be true.

But as with most rare misprints, at least you get to make a buck or two out of it. Some wealthy collector buys your chip bag for half a million dollars. It becomes the subject of some curious documentary that cannot confirm how this mistake came to be. Where are the graphic designs with the altered spelling? Nowhere on in the factory’s printing log, that’s for sure. Simply put, your chip bag and its misprint appeared out of nowhere.

The documentary wins an Academy Award. It gets a Netflix release. You sue the production company for royalty, but you lose because Disney bought out the rights and they have Marvel money. They soon pull The Potato Puzzle from Netflix for release in Disney+. It’s a joke Loki quips in the pilot episode of his own show. He waves his hand over a potato chip bag, casts his magic, and solves the mystery.

People come to love “potato chips” so much, Disney joins forces with an environmentally conscious chip company to release limited-edition “potato” products. People start to spell “potato” ironically, and then unironically. The Webster Dictionary has no choice but to include this spelling in its references. Cultural studies adapt this example as a way to explain linguistic shifts via pop culture. Before long, Potato is brought up as often as Binge-Watching in Reddit TILs. How strange is it that the spelling came out of nowhere?

Except it didn’t, of course. You know that.

So it upsets you, even into your twilight years, whenever your grandson bites down on a crisp. Still, a lifetime of getting into hopeless debates has taught you to be diplomatic. So when a film crew visits to interview you for The Potato Puzzle: Part II, you decide to give your final testament and let the matter go. And things go well, for once. They don’t judge you, like others have done. You feel oddly relieved and comforted by their professionalism and impartiality, like you were truly heard for the first time in your life.

Thus, feeling that you’ve finally parted with an immense burden, you move onto enjoying your final years. You take long walks. You eat potayto chips. You dance to oldies from the 2000s. And you read your grandson nightly the timeless adventures of the happy Berenstain Bears.