Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Short story


Grammar.



The most important thing in my life is grammar and I hate it. I wasn’t good at grammar at school but I had to learn it. It was twenty-two years ago that I learned the rules of syntaxes, morphology, periods, structure and other tedious stuff. Since then my life has been a hell. Spelling, adjectives, vowels, prepositions, commas and many other grammar subjects don't let me rest. I try to enjoy a movie and grammar rules keep coming to my head telling me that the detective is using poor syntaxes. When I'm talking to a friend grammar appears again and indicates me that my friend is misusing words. The same happens when I'm reading a novel, the newspaper, watching television or hearing the radio.



The worst part is when I'm making love. Like yesterday when my girlfriend told me: “Love me forever, love me to much times.” I know that she was in the middle of a passionate moment but ‘much times’? Give me a break. But the most terrible part was when I stopped kissing her and I told her the grave grammatical mistake she had made. Instead of thanking me for the correction she become furious and threw me out of the bedroom! But what can I do? If Karen makes a grammar blunder I'm turned off immediately. Last month she told me: “Your eyes make me crazy.” I became incensed and yelled a few incorrect sentences to her. She didn’t care that I made so many mistakes, and that made me even more upset. Then I called her illiterate, plain, grammatical blooper and other strong adjectives. She got my point and we had a terrible fight. My girlfriend gave me an ultimatum: “get professional help or I don’t want to see you again.” I went to see a psychiatrist. Unfortunately the poor doctor speaks English as a horse; I just couldn't take him seriously. “You may be suffering grammatical stress” – he told me, he wanted to put me on Prozac. Yeah right, I’ll take Prozac if he goes back to remedial English in a community college. Now I want my Karen to see a grammar coach but she refuses, I think we are at a breaking point.



I don't blame my girlfriend. I know I have to change, I know grammar is not the most important thing in this life but I can't help, my brain is a grammar program. Maybe I should go to live in a desert island where I don't have anything to read or voices to hear. The problem is that I'm not a rich person, I don't have a way to support myself without working, and I’m just a poor editor.






8 comments:

The Unknowngnome said...

Ha, ha, ha, ha, very funny! It made me laugh grammatically correct.

Carlos Ponce-Meléndez said...

Thank you Unknowngnome.

Arturo Ponce said...

Really funny, it remembers my father and his grammar rules you have to respect in front of he!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your comment Arturo. Yes there are many people like that.

Carlos

Anonymous said...

Terrific funny story.

John McKeinnzie

Doña Eñe said...

We all make Grammar mistakes, even you, making love or war, my friend.
Anyway, I have enjoyed your Grammar humour a lot!
Here are some quotes about Grammar:
-"Do not be surprised when those who ignore the rules of grammar also ignore the law. After all, the law is just so much grammar" (Robert Brault)
- "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put." (Attributed to Winston Churchill, rejecting the rule against ending a sentence with a preposition)
- "Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense, but the past perfect" (Owens Lee Pomeroy)
- "Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression" (Bronson Alcott)
- "Women are the simple, and poets the superior, artisans of language... the intervention of grammarians is almost always bad" (Rémy de Gourmont)
:)

Doña Eñe said...

- Papá, ¿cuál es el femenino de sexo?
- ¿Qué?
- El femenino de sexo.
- No tiene.
-¿Sexo no tiene femenino?
- No.
- ¿Sólo hay sexo masculino?
- Sí. Es decir, no. Existen dos sexos. Masculino y femenino.
- ¿Y cuál es el femenino de sexo?
- No tiene femenino. Sexo es siempre masculino.
- Pero tú mismo dijiste que hay sexo masculino y femenino.
- El sexo puede ser masculino o femenino. La palabra «sexo» es masculina. El sexo masculino, el sexo femenino.
- ¿No debería ser «la sexa»?
- No.
- ¿Por qué no?
- ¡Porque no! Disculpa. Porque no. «Sexo» es siempre masculino.
- ¿El sexo de la mujer es masculino?
- Sí. ¡No! El sexo de la mujer es femenino.
- ¿Y cómo es el femenino?
- Sexo también. Igual al del hombre.
- ¿El sexo de la mujer es igual al del hombre?
- Sí. Es decir... Mira. Hay sexo masculino y femenino. ¿No es cierto?
- Sí.
- Son dos cosas diferentes.
- Entonces, ¿cuál es el femenino de sexo?
- Es igual al masculino.
- ¿Pero no son diferentes?
- No. ¡O sí! Pero la palabra es la misma. Cambia el sexo, pero no cambia la palabra.
- Pero entonces no cambia el sexo.
- Es siempre masculino. La palabra es masculino.
- No. «La palabra» es femenino.
Si fuera masculino seria «el palabro».
- ¡Basta!, vete a jugar.

El muchacho sale y la madre entra. El padre comenta:
- Tenemos que vigilar al chico.
- ¿Por qué?
- Sólo piensa en gramática.
:)))

Carlos Ponce-Meléndez said...

Dona Ene: Me dio mucha risa la historia del sexo. Es un milagro que aprendamos a comunicarnos con tantas dificultades en el idioma.
Sobre la gramatica, estoy de acuerdo. Yo soy el rey de los errores gramaticales, sobre todo el ingles. Tal vez por eso se me ocurrio la idea de ese cuento, muchas gracias por sus comentarios.