Saturday, August 25, 2012

"G"



Today I got a new cellie, or as you outside this prison call him, roommate. He goes by the name “G,” which I later found out is short for Grammar. Right off the bat I already had a few problems with him. For me, understanding his use of apostrophes, semicolons, colons, just the fact that he is obsessed with proper punctuation drives me insane.


My relationship with G is not at the level at which I wish it would be. I mean, if we are going to spend time inside this cell for whoever knows how long I might as well learn a thing or two about why he does things the way does.

For instance, I have a very difficult time understanding why he puts the apostrophe in different places on certain words in a sentence. An example of this would be, “Smiths’” and “Smith’s.” Often times I struggle to understand the purpose of putting the apostrophe outside the Sat one moment, and inside the S the next. I would guess the reason behind my confusion is that my buddy Mike Word (Microsoft Word) always fixed this issue as I wrote without my acknowledgement, so I never knew what I was really doing wrong. I am gonna have to talk to him once I get out of this place.

G’s explanation of semicolons made my head spin so fast it hurt to think sometimes. When I was a free man I learned that I liked to use semicolons too often when I could simply put a period in its place. Examples of this use of semicolons would be, “The child rolled down the hill on his three-wheeler with the wind in his hair; the boy, unfortunately, was never able to stop and landed in a thorn bush.” In this case I could have simply placed a period in the position of the semicolon and started a new sentence, but instead I chose to drag the sentence on just a bit longer. Maybe that’s why I never made it in the real world, I didn’t know how to stop running my sentences.


G got even worse when he tried to make me understand colons. My problem with colons are when to use them to break apart a list of items in a sentence. Often times I find myself saying, “The boy had three ideas to present to the class on what to do today. His ideas were to read newspaper articles, paint pictures, or play card games.” In this example I could have easily said, “The boy had three ideas to present to the class: read newspaper articles, paint pictures, play cards.” I do not know why I like to write out the ideas rather than simply use a colon, but I guess there are a few things I can learn from G and his love for punctuation.


There are so many ways to describe G, it is just sickening. He is confusing, time consuming, popular, even a bit arrogant about how smart he is. The sooner I get out of this place the better. G and I need to start understanding each other, and I mean soon, or something really bad could happen.

- Stew 8/25/2012