The Grammarian

Okay, you knew I’d eventually have a grammar rant.

When people discover that I have a degree in English – I like to say I’ve mastered it as a foreign language – they fall all over themselves trying to prove that they know the rules of grammar. Inevitably a sentence pops up, “Just between you and me – I mean I…” to which I reply, “No, you were right the first time.” That baffles many people, and they try to argue the point until I tell them me is the object of a preposition, so it’s me, not I. It’s surprising how many people have no idea what I’m talking about.

The information has nothing to do with my degree. That was in writing, not in grammar. The grammar is from fifth grade English. From grades five through eight we learned parts of speech, and diagrammed sentences of increasing complexity. I was the diagram queen of my eighth grade class.

What solidified my knowledge of English grammar was studying Spanish for four years in high school. Whatever I didn’t quite understand about English grammar, I learned through Spanish grammar.

Unless they’re using double negatives or saying seen without an auxiliary verb (that’s a helper verb, folks), most people’s grammar doesn’t bother me. What I do find aggravating are commercials where the combination of poor spelling and bad grammar make me shudder.

 I can accept a company using a misspelling for their name. Dunkin’ Donuts, for example. It follows the play on words of ‘60s bands, The Beatles and the Byrds. The trouble is other companies followed the lead and began misspelling doughnut to the degree that now most Americans think “donut” is the correct spelling.

Spelling isn’t the worst. Ad writers show their ignorance of word meaning with words like less. Ask what the opposite of more is, and they’ll say less. But wait. Only sometimes. Fewer is also the opposite of more. “More taste, less calories.” No, no, no! If you can count it, it’s fewer.

More recently a healthcare company has proven its ad people don’t have a good command of the language. Their slogan is “Live fearless.” Gaaah! Live is a verb. Fearless is an adjective. Verbs are modified by adverbs! Even people on the streets who think donut is correct spelling have taken markers to correct the ad posters with an ly.

With advertisements misspelled and with poor grammar assaulting us daily, is it any wonder people have lost their ability to use correct grammar? To make matters worse, spell check – at least on American computers – is wrong on several words. Its/It’s is wrong. Spell check/Grammar check on Word documents will insist it’s is possessive. Lay and Lie are wrong on Grammar check as well. And forget phrases set off by commas. Grammar check apparently doesn’t like commas. It also frequently doesn’t recognize common verbs.

When the ads in print or on TV and the computer tools designed to help us are constantly bombarding us with bad spelling and incorrect grammar, is it any wonder many Americans can’t write a grammatically correct, correctly spelled sentence? And don’t even get me started on to, too and two.

Let’s eat Grandma.

Let’s eat, Grandma.

Commas save lives.

What Would You Do?

Imagine it: what would you do if you were given the chance to start over? We’ve all been asked at one time or another, “If you had the chance to do your life over, what would you change?”

            

Most of us like to fantasize other scenarios our lives might have played out while still expecting to meet our loved ones but avoiding the mistakes. Most people wouldn’t give up a beloved spouse or children. But what if…

            

Movies have been written with this theme. Think of Rose in Titanic. Wealthy, engaged to a rich Englishman, she feels stifled by the second class existence she’ll live as his wife. When fate, in the form of an iceberg intervenes, she is given a second chance, and she runs with it. On the rescue ship, she gives a false name, and gives up her chance at wealth in a quest for happiness. By all accounts, she finds it.

            

Yes, it is a movie, but isn’t it just possible that some survivors of the Titanic – or the Lusitania or any other ship that sank – made similar choices, and took on new identities?

            

There are stories of members of the SS eluding authorities and moving to South America to start new lives, avoiding the jail sentences they deserved. No doubt other, lower ranking participants in the Second World War, or even those from other European countries trying to evade becoming soldiers found ways of disappearing and reappearing elsewhere years later with new identities.

           

  Not everyone given that opportunity would do it. But not everyone who would do it is necessarily a bad person.

            

Imagine you’re in a bad relationship, but you’re significant other has threatened you harm if you ever try to leave. Imagine that on your way to work one sunny Tuesday, instead of going directly to your office on the 103^rd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, you make a stop at a local drug store. As a result, you’re late for work, standing outside as the plane crashes into the building, your life saved. You can make the phone call telling people you’re all right or you can walk away, give up everything and start a new life.

            

While I don’t know quite how someone gets a new identity without being in witness protection, I can well imagine that at least a few people survived 9/11 who were listed as dead, as well as other disasters throughout the world.

            

While it’s interesting to fantasize about what you would do if you were presented with the opportunity to start a new life, I’m also reminded of a Night Gallery episode from the 1970s in which a young man finds himself transported from nearly dying aboard the Titanic to waking up on the Lusitania. From there he escapes death once again to wake up on the Andrea Doria. I think the lesson to be learned is: Be careful what you wish for.

What’s Wrong with Pretty?

Perhaps I’m a victim of my time. When I was growing up, movie stars were gorgeous. They were not overweight, their hair was beautifully coiffed at all times in public and they wore lovely clothes. They did not look like anyone I knew.

Even on TV people were nice looking, although perhaps not as glamourous as movie stars. With the exception of very few shows, like The Honeymooners, leading men and ladies were not overweight, and men never had a five-o’clock shadow, much less a beard, unless representing another century. The only negative piece was that all of the lead roles were white people.

I’m not saying here that I lived in ugly town. Quite the contrary. The people in my neighborhood were nice looking, but average. The women looked like – well, moms. A testament to the fact that mothers weren’t always perfectly coiffed was the fact that before we went to any of the shops, mothers of my neighborhood changed into a dress – or at least a skirt – combed their hair and applied lipstick.

 And I never knew my mother to own pearls, much less wear them while vacuuming, as Beaver Cleaver’s mother did. My dad didn’t wear a sweater while sitting around the house, although he did carry a brief case, as the dads did in shows such as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver. My parents didn’t have a maid or a nanny, either. My mother did sometimes break into song for no apparent reason, so I assumed other mothers behaved the same.

With the advent of color TV, something else happened. Leading roles began to be performed by people of color. Diahann Carroll was the first breakthrough African American actress to have her own show, Julia, in which she played a single mom who worked as a nurse. While having a show that portrayed a black family having the same trials and tribulations as a white one was groundbreaking, Ms. Carroll was a strikingly beautiful actress who fit in with the other actresses at the time.

But her show paved the way for other programs featuring African American actors, such as The Mod Squad, Amen, Star Trek – which featured the first interracial kiss on TV – and The Cosby Show. In time other ethnic groups were represented in the weeknight lineup, and more recently, more sexually diverse characters.

But gradually over the years, leading ladies and men in both film and TV became less elegant. Perhaps it was the revolutionary atmosphere of the ‘60s that started it. Male leads no longer looked like my dad, but more like The Beatles. Female leads no longer acted in ways my mother would. People who had heretofore been relegated to supporting roles because they lacked the beauty, the elegance or the trim figures of stars of earlier days, were now starring in their own shows.

It wasn’t just the shows that made this change. Commercials also reflected this change. Where once a beauty queen would have hawked butter, now a somewhat dowdy beautician soaked people’s nails in dishwashing liquid to prove it was gentle on hands. Margaret Hamilton, best known as the wicked witch of the west in the original Wizard of Oz movie and looking less elegant without the green skin, sold Maxwell House Coffee. And commercials that required singing turned to the tone deaf to croon the jingle.

I wonder if the casting calls looked like this: tone deaf child with a lisp wanted to sing in commercial.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t find a child singing off-key – or lisping, for that matter – remotely cute. And it certainly doesn’t encourage me to buy a product. In fact, I find that worse than having 10 different adults singing a jingle one at a time in different keys. It does speak to me; it says here’s a product that will kill any talent you may have had.

People may like the fact that actors in film and TV are just like them. Maybe they enjoy watching people like Roseann or Archie Bunker make fools of themselves. That was never my cuppa.

It is reassuring to know that just because you don’t fit a narrow image of beauty like, perhaps, Marilyn Monroe or Twiggy, doesn’t mean you can’t have a career in acting. But I’d like to see people make an effort to look good to the best of their ability if they want to be stars.

I want my leading men and women to be beautiful. I want the singers to be able to sing, and I don’t want the speakers to have a speech impediment. Is that too much to ask?

Perhaps it’s because I see film and TV as fantasy, not reality. I want the actors to reflect the fantasy of how I wish life was. Reality I can get without leaving home. Yes, when I was a child I dreamed of growing up to be the singers or actors of whom I was a fan. But I knew then that’s what it was: a dream. I wasn’t going to have plastic surgery or starve myself to turn into a fantasy.

I don’t look at actors as role models. They are human, just like the rest of us. But they are the cream. The people in my neighborhood don’t look like David Tennant or Meryl Streep. The lady next door could most likely not get up in front of an audience and perform in a Shakespeare play.

When I turn on the TV, I want to be entertained by someone who would never be my next door neighbor. I want to be enchanted, captivated and taken to a fantasy land, that place we only find in dreams. Otherwise, I’m just looking in the mirror and not liking what I see.