A fellow sexagenarian and
one time classmate, my friend Greg has been a trusted confidante for many years
and we share numbers of emails back and forth each week, writing to each other
about just about any topic under the sun that’s interesting at the time. Like many old timers, we look to the past
for sweet memories of times that seemed to be simpler, easier, and better in
some ways than living in a present when there doesn’t seem to be a lot of
civility and getting along as there seemed to be back then. To be certain, though, we're both quite glad
still to be ticking some forty-three years out of high school, and while it
seems most of the time that we know just about everything there is to know
about each other, now and then one of us manages to pose a question to the
other that isn't immediately answerable without giving it some thought. So it was a few days ago when Greg asked me
why I’m probably the biggest snob about education (regarding syntax and grammar
specifically) that he knows and I found myself scrambling for a quick answer,
which there didn’t seem to be.
Greg was corresponding
with a retired gentleman who’s well educated and who had enjoyed respectable
status in the community, having had been a federal judge for a number of years,
regarding a cycling event in which both were planning to ride, and mentioned to
me that the guy writes emails like E. E. Cummings did poetry with no
capitalizations and neither punctuation marks to separate his phrases and
sentences. I, naturally had to make
mention of how little I think of persons who do that when Greg posed the
question about my being a snob regarding such things. I never thought of myself that way simply for expecting others to
use English skills that were taught at least in rudimentary form in
kindergarten, so to answer his question I knew that some quality introspection
needed to be done. That’s where the
scooter comes in; I do my best thinking, especially about myself, when I’m out
riding.
I got my trusty steed
ready to roll, but didn’t make it a mile from home when I realized that I was
under dressed for the occasion because, as usual, I underestimated how cold it
actually was and would be once I was in motion. I made it around the long block only to park in front of the
house for a minute or two while I ran in to bundle up. Naturally I had no idea of where I even
planned to go because ending up somewhere wasn’t important in the least. I just needed the relatively distraction
free environment on the scooter to hammer out my thoughts and forge them so
they’d make sense, most of all to me.
If that last sentence
threw you because of how hyper vigilant somebody needs to be while riding on
city streets on two wheels with many distractions, don’t over think it. Being able to pay attention for potholes,
dumb pedestrian moves, and dip wads driving cars as if they’d never driven
before isn't the kind of thinking that interferes with the important stuff
like, “Why do I feel the need to be hung up on how the English language is
used?”
It has been a very
unseasonably cold April this year so the Piaggio hasn’t gotten a single decent
washing yet as I’ve not yet restored water service to the outdoor spigots. Yes, it bothers me a little for the bike to
look so dirty, but I can’t bring myself to wash it and get myself all wet and
cold, a combination I particularly deplore.
After I dressed more
sensibly I got back on the scooter and headed one community over from here to
the top of a hill where there’s a municipal park that, as I suspected, would be
deserted because the kids are still in school.
As I rode I began thinking about why I insist on good English to the
extent that I will not typically even accept a Facebook friendship from
somebody who writes like a baboon.
(Exceptions are made for pretty women, though. Dumb doesn’t make them any less attractive to the eyes.)
I’m sure that part of the
reason for my snobbery is simply that I was a teacher for 30+ years and that
many of my assignments had me teaching middle school English, (and the grammar
side, not Literature usually), and it was my job to fix bad English. That compulsion to “red pen” grammar
mistakes is ingrained and it’s not so simple to just "turn it off” now
that I'm retired.
(I have no idea why Blogger changed the font for the following paragraph, nor can I figure out how to fix it.)
There’s more to it too, though, that’s also related to my
career as a teacher, and it has to do with respect. As a teacher one will not survive in any classroom from
pre-school through graduate school without commanding respect. Yes, a good teacher will eventually earn the
respect of a classroom full of “kids" if he's worth his salt, but even
before it can be earned, respect must be demanded from day one if one is to
keep control of a classroom in order to do the day’s lessons without all hell
breaking loose. I was proud of being
well respected by about 99.9% of the students I taught through the years, and I
detested having to demand at least the overt respect of the .1% who had for
various reasons never been taught by their parents to show respect even to
them, but when I called for quiet, an observer would have been able to hear a
pin drop in my classroom, and a very fine, light, small pin at that.
Using correct English in
correspondence is a sign of respect. It
implies a respect for someone for whom the “extra effort" of holding down
that shift key to make a capital letter, spelling out a word like “you” in
full, and pressing that period at the end of a sentence is worth it. Correspondingly, writing something like,
“how r u today,” suggests a disdain for the person to whom one is writing. It says, “I don't think you're worth all
that hard work of writing correctly,” to me regardless of the
writer’s actual intent. My ultimate
answer to Greg, why I’m a grammar snob, is about that - respect or the
consequences when there is a lack of it.
(And here's that font nonsense once again!)
Honestly I’m very tired of hearing, “It’s not important as
long as the message gets across.” It’s
not that simple. Ours is increasingly a
society of “It doesn’t matter."
The big news services are constantly putting into the spotlight idiotic
circumstances where proper authorities try to enforce rules that are being
broken with impunity.” As an example,
consider a private school with a dress code that requires specified hair
lengths for boys in which there is one boy who gets his head shaved bald to
‘support my friend who has cancer.’”
He’s suspended for a clear and concentrated breaking of the rules. It should end there. He should serve his suspension and that
should be the end of it. But, no. A day later there on CNN the local story is
appears as national news decrying the school’s administration for being so
heartless in expecting compliance with a simple rule. There’s no respect left, not even for the Office of the President
of the United States. After decades in
the classroom where, as I noted, respect determines the tone of every aspect of
the interactions between a group of students with one person in charge, I'm not
just going to kick the concept to the curb because I’m now retired.
There is more to the
story. I happen to like a rich
vocabulary. Meanings, which are more
concise because of the choices of certain words, are communicated better when
using the “correct" words.
"Big" and "enormous" more or less mean the same
thing, but they don’t connote exactly the same concept. On the other hand, I deplore the creations
of portmanteau words such as, “humongous,” and, “ginormous,” that are created
by persons who think they're way more clever than they actually are in making
new words that do not add anything to the meanings of already
existing words. So, in addition to
folks who can use proper punctuation and such, I like to engage in
correspondence with persons who don’t write like dolts who seem like they never
made it past the fourth grade.
I suppose it was all that
thinking of things school related that led me to where I ended up atop that
hill where is the colorful gazebo by which I used to measure the starts and the
endings of my academic years. Each
year, right about now there would be perhaps six or seven weeks of school left
and I'd head to that gazebo with a light heart already anticipating that last
day of school soon to come and the precious freedom it would bring with
it. On occasion during each summer I’d
venture back there simply to nail home that feeling of relative
irresponsibility I enjoyed when school was out. With a heavy heart I’d go there too as August wound down
realizing that my time of fun was coming to an end, just as I'd venture there
sometimes in early autumn when school was already back in session trying to
squeeze out an extra minute or two of pretending that I was still free to come
and go as I pleased regardless of what day of the week or time of day it might
be.
Being on the hill also
presented me with the opportunity to put my new Sony camera through some of its
paces. I needed to replace the beloved
Nikon that served me well for a number of years in nearly constant residence in
the pouch attached to my belt, and for the cost and features, the Sony HX80 was
the perfect replacement. Unless I’m
going to the gym, when I travel light, I always carry a full point and shoot
camera with me instead of just using my phone to document my experiences.
The hills in the Back
Mountain form the western wall of the Wyoming Valley.
The available 30x optical
zoom of the Sony brings the hills much closer, even with some numbers to spare. A tripod would have made the scene much
clearer, but it’s not bad for a hand held shot.
The three Xs in a row say
I’m a winner for introspecting and enjoying myself on a great scooter
ride. I kept the baseball (actually
hockey) cap on under the helmet on the ride home. It was still a little chillier than I’d hoped the ride would be.
