Deliver Me From Evil (poor grammar)

Image by squidpants via Flickr

My sister calls me up,

“A heavily pregnant woman walks into a pizza store,” she starts.

“Ok,” I reply, warming up to the jokes opening line.

“She places her order, and then asks the guy behind the counter  ‘can you deliver me?’”

I burst out laughing. Hysterical, I think. A new level of misplaced modifiers!

And then my sister upped the ante.

“It’s a true story.”

“What?!” I spurt, “Who told it to you?”  I thought she’d then tell me one of those endless chains of friend’s sister’s cousin’s aunt’s dog, five years ago, but no, this was only second hand news.

“Ta!” she tells me proudly.

“No way! – Let me talk to him!”  

A few moments later, I move up the chain, and hear it from the observer. And now I am passing this gem onto you, guard it with your life.

This is not an urban legend, or a good joke, this is a True Story.

F’real!

Idiom = Idiot

She thought it was cute. I thought it was hysterical.

I was talking to a heimish/chassidish neighbor on Shabbos. I don’t recall how we got to the topic or what the topic even was, but she was reminded of a cute story that happened when she was first married.

In the beginning, her husband liked to go out at night, to Wal-Mart, for a walk, anything, he just liked to be out. She would go along with him some nights and other nights make excuses, like she had laundry, or something around the house that had to be done. He cottoned on, and realized, that she didn’t really like going out at night.

He turns to her soon after and says,

“You know, when we got information about you, everyone said you were a very out-going girl.”

My neighbor looked at her husband in surprise and protest, “I am!” she insisted (and she is).

Her husband was perplexed, “So why don’t you like going out at night?”

My neighbor, thought the misunderstood idiom by her Williamsburg raised husband was the cutest ever. I just thought it was hysterical in a laugh at you – not with you way.

It took every ounce of self control to not dissolve into howling laughter.

My Students Ask/Asks a Question

All I wanted to do was teacher subject-verb agreement. I prefaced it by telling them that besides for being important in writing, this lesson can be applied to their speech as well. Naturally, they’d rather argue the validity of the importance of the lesson than the actual lesson itself.

“Why do we have to speak properly, everyone speaks incorrectly anyway.”

“No, one knows the difference.”

“I can understand someone when they speak incorrectly, so who cares.”

I fought back.

“If all your friends jump off a cliff, will you jump too?”

“I know the difference.”

“You understand when you cleaning lady says ‘I clean floor’, would you like to sound like her too?”

They weren’t really swayed by my argument, (partially, or maybe mostly because they just wanted to avoid learning grammar, so disagreeing with me would delay the torture) Most girls simply couldn’t get past the concept that everyone they know speaks a certain way, so why should they be different?

The cleaning lady example, or black dialect, didn’t work, these people were too distant from them, and they couldn’t relate. My students spoke a decent English, the others had blatant disregard for the rules.

And then I told them about my sister, and her job. She’s a nurse in a office with a VERY large Chassidish clientele. Too often, she’d call me up and tell about the slaughter of the English language she witnessed that day, including gems like:

My son was fevering

He got a cold this night

And

I was vominating

My students roared with laughter, some of them eagerly raising their hands to tell me their funny chassidish story.

“You think it’s funny?” I asked them. They nodded vigorously. “Well, you’re probably someone else’s fool.” It was pretty cool to see how fast their expressions changed from derisive laughter, to dumbfounded and slightly embarrassed.

So I won the battle today. And they learned all about the different conditions of subject-verb agreement. Don’t think they’re not gonna pull the same shtick with their next year’s teacher.

It’s not about the answer, but the quality of the banter.

Perspective On Perfection

My son is gorgeous. Not to brag, but everyone wants to know when his Gerber contract is coming through. His smile is broad and happy. His eyes a deep blue twinkle, framed with long dark lashes. He has a full head of dirty blonde hair, which looks real cute in a faux Mohawk. And his cheeks are full, fat and a little droopy.

My son is calm, easy going, and well behaved. He only cries when he’s hungry, or hurt, or tired. When he’s teething he’s a bit kvetchy, but even then.  He’s happy go lucky, pleasing, plays nicely by himself, and lets me breathe. He also sleeps through the night and wakes up about 8:30 in the morning. He rarely gets sick, and seems to have a solid immune system.

My son is a bit advanced. He was sitting by 4 months, crawling by 6. He’s standing on his own for a few seconds at a time these days, and is of course cruising. He has 2 teeth, and says Ma-ma. He has a pretty decent pincer grip for his age. He has great problem solving navigational skills, and is quite the explorer.

People ask what  I did to deserve such a gorgeous, genius, good child. I don’t look at it that way.

Hashem only gives a person what he can handle. I can only handle perfection apparently. That’s not too good.