Road Apples
July 27, 2009

Grammar rears her ugly head again

By Tim Sanders

Here is another grammatically correct grammar column about grammar, which is something about which we, grammatically speaking, know a lot about. Grammar, I mean. When it comes to punctuation, we can puncture with the best of them. We can also take a jumbled sentence, diagram it, throw out the unnecessary consonants, move our vowels, clean out the carburetor and have it up and running in no time. Remember that good grammar does not have to make sense, it only has to sound like it makes sense. That simple adage makes it possible for us to answer all of the following grammar questions without fear of contradiction.


Q: Do you honestly feel that grammar is all that important?

A: We cannot overstate the importance of grammar. Without good grammar, Louis Armstrong would not have been able to step out of the Apollo Theater in 1969, set foot on the lunar surface, and repeat that phrase that still echoes down through the corridors of time, which had something or other to do with taking a giant leap. And likewise, Newton would never have been able to record his firsthand experience with gravity while sitting under that cocoanut palm on Miami Beach. It was 1971, and I believe “OUCH” was Wayne’s exact, grammatically correct, quote.


Q: So obviously you know as much about history as you know about grammar?

A: Absolutely.


Q: Then what are the catacombs and where are they found?

A: The catacombs are found under ancient cities such as Rome, Paris, and Cleveland, and they were used by ancient urban residents to groom their cats.


Q: Ancient people groomed and combed cats?

A: The ancient Chinese actually dressed their cats before stir frying them. Other people, like the Egyptians, combed, bathed, and shaved their cats. In 650 B.C., combing, bathing, and shaving Egyptian cats was a rite of passage for young boys who wanted to join fraternities.


Q: Speaking of catacombs, what is “doggerel,” and could you give an example?

A: If you’ve ever stepped in doggerel, you know what it is. The smell usually reminds people of really bad poetry, such as the following lines by the immortal Robert Frost:

“Use Wildroot Cream-Oil, Charlie,
Start using it today.

You’ll have a tough time seeing, Charlie,
Because your hat will keep sliding down over your eyes.”


Q: Isn’t there more to that poem?

A: Yes. We believe it also mentions that a head full of Cream-Oil, which is 99 and 44/100 percent pure lard, will keep the flies out of Charlie’s soup.


Q: I’m always confusing the words “they’re,” “their,” and “there.” Why?

A: Because their pronounced the same, but there spelled differently.


Q: Don’t you mean “they’re?”
A: Where?

Q: Never mind.

A: We professionals never do.


Q: I recently read a newspaper article about an Indiana man who was attacked by rapid raccoons. Do you suppose they meant “rabid” raccoons, or were those raccoons just exceptionally fast?

A: We don’t care.


Q: Last week my Civics teacher, Mr. Nestler, asked the class what we thought of the U.S. Congress as a hole. I got to laughing and couldn’t stop, so he sent me to the principal’s office. Why?

A: Some teachers don’t appreciate outhouse humor.


Q: I wrote a short story about a man who fell into a 450 cubic-inch, diesel-powered wood chipper and got himself shredded. My English teacher she said it lacked grammatical unity and moral clarity, and told me to rewrite it. What did she mean by that?

A: What she meant by “rewrite” was that you should “write it all over again, only different.” The grammatical unity part meant that if a man falls into a 450 cubic-inch, diesel-powered wood chipper, grammatically speaking he gets chipped, not shredded. To get shredded, he’d have to fall into a 450 cubic-inch, diesel-powered paper shredder, of which there are probably only three in existence, with all three located on Capitol Hill. The moral clarity part has to do with whether or not your shredee was deserving of the shredding. We would recommend the shredding of an actual senator rather than, for example, an innocent senate page or a member of the janitorial staff.


Q: Don’t you mean “custodial engineering” staff, not “janitorial” staff?

A: If you are a member of the powerful International Brotherhood of Custodial Engineers, whom we suspect had something to do with cleaning up after the unfortunate but purely accidental incident involving Jimmy Hoffa at or near the alleged Red Fox restaurant on or about July 30, 1975, purportedly, then yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Or not, if you prefer.


Q: Speaking of politics, when you have two Eric Holders in a room, are they called Attorneys General Holder or Attorney General Holders?

A: Grammatically speaking, we have no earthly idea what you’re talking about, but your reference to an Attorney General Holder conjures up images of an exceptionally large oven mitt.


Q: Which is correct: “Grandpa has ran into the bathroom again,” or “Grandpa done run into the bathroom again?”

A: That depends on the preceding sentence.


Q: The preceding sentence involves a quart of prune juice and two hearty bowls of Grape Nuts.

A: Then for safety’s sake we’d recommend moving Grandpa to the bathroom with great haste, as in: “A blur, which we think was Grandpa and his walker, just shot past us into the bathroom.”


We, by which I mean myself and my tapeworms, hope this has been helpful. We would have answered more questions, but these are the only ones we could think of. By which I mean these are the only ones of which we could think.