Finding Out the Other Meaning of "Sic"

In my mind the word "sic" comes from Latin, means "thus", and serves as a conjunction. In the book,  Super Sad True Love Story, by Gary Shteyngart, this word pops up occasionally in the diary of Lenny Abramov. I finally asked my mom what it meant, because I was sick (hehe) of not knowing what it represented.

One of the first times that this word shows up is when Lenny, "walked out into the stifling June heat toward the ambulance bearing the legend 'American Medicle [sic] Response,'" (Shteyngart, 80). I recognized that the word medical in the name of the ambulance company was spelled wrong, and I was shocked. I figured that a well known company would care about their reputation enough to make sure they spelled their own name correctly. This illuminated the disregard for quality of grammar in the society which Shteyngart created. Shteyngart probably had inspiration from today's society, mainly from Twitter (see the picture below) and posts on the internet.

Perhaps the picture above is fake, but if it is a joke, there is still a basis for it, and a grammatical mistake that inspired someone to make the fake tweet.

I had seen one of the characters misspell something earlier in the book, when Eunice's best friend wrote "mails" instead of "males" on page 46, but I excused it because it was non-formal writing, and I could relate because when some of my friends are writing things to me, they seem to be more relaxed with spelling and grammar. Seeing the depth of apathy for grammatical correctness let me see how degenerated the country had become.

After my mom told me that an author uses sic when they are quoting something that they know includes a grammatical or spelling mistake, I wondered why Lenny wasn't commenting on the fact that it was misspelled, or launching a campaign against the slap to the proverbial face of the American language. I was surprised when he didn't do this because I have noticed that when people misspell things on the internet other internet users don't feel any shame in pointing out their mistakes. There are several pictures on the internet, like the example below, depicting Facebook statuses with extreme spelling and grammar mistakes.

Then I realized that Lenny didn't comment on it, because he didn't care. And his not caring about people respecting the English language was one of the reasons why it was so rampant. But I guess I shouldn't be talking because I am not always perfect with my spelling and grammar. This book has certainly inspired me to do my part to preserve the quality of the American language, with respect to spelling and grammar, so that I don't one get hurt, and see an ambulance with American Medicle Response written on the side.