Parse This

If you are 21 or older & if you have finished your formal education then stop right now, get on your knees and thank God that you are no longer in middle school. Go ahead. I'll wait.

We grown-ups often take for granted the fact that we don't have to engage in any pursuit that is not of interest to us. We may have jobs that don't stoke the fires of our passion, but we can always come home and knit or play 1st person shooter games. We can blog, drink beer, watch "Gilmore girls", read Tolstoy in Russian. Not all our life is bliss but we have choices.

Further, if you hated math in school you don't have to be an accountant when you grow up. Use a calculator to balance your checkbook (or hell, use Quicken. Even better. Who needs math facts?) If science didn't make you quiver you can ignore string theory and quarks and all that other stuff that sounds really cool but makes most eyes (mine anyway) glaze over. For me, it is enough that there are scientists. Doesn't mean I have to get all hot and bothered about it. And the list goes on. Once you are done with 12th grade you pretty much get to pick what you care about and ignore (if you want) the rest. And you know what? That's a good thing. Be grateful. Any time you entertain a new idea, discover a new author, contemplate a challenging thought, you do so as an act of free will. No one is standing over you making you improve your mind and no one is giving you a grade.

I majored in English, as The Spouse likes to remind me when I can't spell a word correctly. Yes, I did. I majored in English because in college you get to spend the majority of your time studying something that interests you. I was interested in books and in writing which made majoring in English a fabulous fit. Having an English degree means that I can read and write. Pretty well, in fact. It doesn't mean I know everything about English. I especially don't know much about grammar and origins of words and such. Too much like science.

I studied grammar in middle school. I can still see the text book. It was smaller than all our other books and had a pretty blue cover. Inside it were rules, hieroglypics and lots of words in bold print. The basics were a snap:

Verb=action word
Noun=naming word
Adjective=describing word

Good enough. I learned it then and I remember it now. I have a vague facility with pronouns, personal and otherwise, but after that? Fuggetaboutit.

I have a fairly good ear for grammar. I can tell if something sounds right, I just can't break it down into all it's little bits and tell you why it sounds right. I know when I dangle a participle but I can't rightly tell you what a participle is. (I did that on purpose). And my dear friends, even if you managed to retain all that crap and can pull it up at the drop of a hat, you know as well as I do that it doesn't really inform your daily life in any meaningful way. No, it doesn't.

The Child is working on a take-home test. It is a do-over. She's already flunked it once. I looked at it yesterday and I'd have flunked it, too. She's dealing with complements and direct and indirect objects. Say what? I don't remember any of that nonesense. I looked it all up and worked my way through the examples. I thought I understood it but the first sentence in the test totally blew all the little formulas and charts I'd worked out. It's a stupid sentence about a puzzle and I don't even know if it has an object. Or a point.

To make matters worse, I looked over the second part of the test and there are phrases like "predicate nominative" and "predicate adjective". If it weren't for the "naming word" clue in the latter I'd be totally screwed. My head hurts now. I've emailed The Teacher requesting a meeting because I can't really help The Child if I don't get it, now can I? No wonder the poor thing is confused. Grammar rules are stupid. I hate them. I'm going to go watch "All My Children" until the throbbing subsides.