12 December, 2005
Grammar
I've never been much of a true student. If something interests me, I absorb it like a sponge; if not, I tend to half-heartedly notice it, then move forgetfully on.
I am very lucky that Grammar and I get along. Grammar is a good friend of mine, and I know him fairly intimately, but he does have some secrets. I could easily learn them, if only I took the time to read his journal. It seems, however, that I prefer to simply go with the flow, and learn more and more about Grammar as time goes by.
One horrid memory I have is from my undergraduate years, the sepia-toned halcyon days of DePaulia. I must have been a sophomore, in one of my French classes with the nonpareil Dr. B, and we were doing exquisite corpses (you know, "Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau," etc) on a strip of paper printed with sentence parts, so that our nonsense would be at least somewhat grammatically functional in our limited lilting halting French. It came my turn, and I was to supply a preposition. I had no idea what a preposition was, even though I was never chastised for slapping them at the end of sentences. I placed a word, inwardly sheepish, outwardly bold, and passed the dead strip on. When the professeuse read the corpse aloud, she paused where my word was and scolded the class. Scanning the assembled, making eye contact with each of us, she examined our souls. I don’t think she or anyone else could tell that it was I who had ruined the game, and turned our absurd surreal text into gibberishy mush, so this is my apology to all involved, all these years later. At that time, I felt like Grammar had cancelled our dinner plans, telling me that he was sick, and then later finding out from a mutual friend that Grammar had in fact gone out with someone else that night, some glamorous new trick, surely nowhere near as amusing as I. I hope that that someone gave Grammar a very nasty but non-life-threatening STD. But then, Grammar never learns.
All this drivel reminds me of a Winston Churchill quote, supposedly in reply to someone who tried to correct something he had written: "This is the kind of impertinence up with which I shall not put."
