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Grammar Monster

I asked about your earliest memory.

Abigail said:

My earliest memory is of sitting in the backseat of a car with my brother. We are both wrapped in blankets and, even though it is night, we are watching a bright light from outside. The bright light is the house next door to ours, which is on fire. The house which is attached on one side to our house. I don’t remember feeling scared, but I distinctly remember being wrapped up with my brother in the scratchy blanket and watching while the fire was put out.

Today I mentioned to my mother that this was my earliest memory and she remarked that the fire happened in January 1974, when I was 16 months old.

Click: images that capture the imagination.

A man with a straggly beard was standing in front of a subway station grooming a handsome German Shepherd dog who was sitting docily with his paw in the air. I thought for a moment that he was offering dog grooming on the street, but then caught sight of the cardboard sign reading, “Lost job, lost home, but not hope. Please help.”

You know…I hear they drug those dogs.

I overheard a teenage girl on the subway:

“…and her brother scared us for a joke, and she screamed and screamed and screamed and I got really scared. I was laughing and crying and I locked all the doors and she was crying with her head under the bed.”

Can’t you just see the scene when the parents got home?

“John, we left you in charge of the girls for two hours and we come home to this?”

And John’s like, “Mom, I was trying to play a joke! All I said was boogedy-boogedy! I didn’t know they were going to get HYSTERICAL.”

Paul and I walked by a pale, pudgy shirtless man in his twenties on the subway platform. He was standing, plucking invisible strings in the air and dancing, and everyone was giving him a wide berth. When an elderly woman tried to bustle by, he gestured to the empty bench behind him and said grandly, “A seat for YOU!” and she cast him a horrified look and scurried by.

When we reached the top of the escalator Paul said, “Mama! That was my first look at Zanta!”

And I said, “Uh…no,” and I thought about trying to explain it as the difference between 1985-era Madonna standing on a stage singing “Material Girl” and Kendall Texiera standing in the quad of Miller Jr. High wearing elbow length black acrylic lace fingerless gloves, singing “Material Girl” as it blares over the PA system.

But I went with, “Maybe he’s someone who kind of wants to be like Zanta.”

I was on the subway standing next to a college kid. He was holding his term paper which was titled, “Legacy’s of Great Men and Woman”. The kid was lucky I had to get off at the next stop, or I wouldn’t have been able to contain myself.

Sage Hi, can I see that for just a second?

College Kid What?

Sage Can I just –

College Kid Wait – what? What are you doing!

Sage I just – have – to -

College Kid Get away from me!

Sage No, seriously – let me just change it to ies and then I’ll -

College Kid Help! HEEEELP!