UBC LLED367-302 2016

Morning of craziness

Alongside three small terrors

Bring out my best defense

Toss out the perfect parenting rules

In the early hours

The clock ticks away

In the kitchen

Slapping together lunch

By myself

Coffee keeping me company

Into the hall

Traipsing down stairs

Pajama-clad child

Taking a peek

Accidentally knocking over coffee

Counter now soaked

Ruining sandwiches

Sopping wet snack food

Better than yesterday

A shoe oddly thrown in the trash

Made agonizingly late

Today, which will go the same

Tragically non-punctual

Irrationally delayed

Because it is always the same

Plus or minus mishaps

Despite my best intentions

Children are inconsiderate

Thoughtless

They give no assistance

“Let us be late!”, they rejoice

Argumentative yesterday

Toothpaste is not a cleaning agent

Suppose I say sit

My children will jump

While walking out the door

Backpacks forgotten

Arguing like lawyers

These children are heartless

Left, right, left, right, left, right…

It’s about 12:30pm on a very mild Sunday. You just ran pass another big, blue sign that marked the 29th kilometre of the run. As you make a left turn onto the dreaded Burrard Bridge, you grab one of the bottles attached to you at the hip and take a quick gulp of the grape-flavoured electrolytes. You’re grateful that your friend helped you buy a hydration belt with his work discount. It’s also a good thing you only had one glass of wine and champagne at the open bar event that took place two nights ago. That was still more than what you should’ve drank, though. If only alcohol wasn’t exceptionally dehydrating…

Despite the fact you’ve ran over the bridge so many times to the point where you can run with your eyes closed, you feel like you’re dying a little on the inside. Your throat feels as dry as the peanut butter whole wheat toast you had for breakfast, even though you just had a drink a minute ago. It’s been almost 4 hours since you left Queen Elizabeth Park. The sweat on your face, hands, arms, and legs feels gritty like sand. You can’t even fathom how bad you smell anymore. On the bright side, at least you’re not prone to developing blisters on your feet while running.

The sun relentlessly beats down on you as you inch your way across the bridge. This is the part you always despise. Even though your brain is telling you that you can keep running, you legs start to feel tired. You know you can’t stop moving, otherwise the fatigue will really start to kick in. You can’t help but wonder if this damned bridge is anything like Heartbreak Hill.

Surveying your proximity, you see fellow runners also crawling like slugs. Your friends are nowhere to be seen; they’re faster runners than you are. Realistically, you’re running in a crowd of 4,999 lunatics, so it’s not like you should expect to run into them. Slowing down in an effort to conserve energy, you look beyond the dismal concrete pillars that hold up the bridge. You’re reminded of how beautiful and lush the city is. For a moment, the picturesque view of the city takes your mind off the fatigue in your legs and calves, and of course, the stupid bridge.

Nearly a million years later, you finally made your way across and off the bridge. Somehow, you managed not to fall on your face or run into any concrete pillars. As you make a left turn towards English Bay, you see another big, blue sign a few hundred metres away: 30 kilometres. 12.2 left to go.

As your mom reminds you on a daily basis, you’re a freaking maniac. She’s right about that one.

Time stands still when you turn on television. Jim Rockford is a private investigator with a knee injury. He is the star of the television show, “Rockford Files.” His dad, Rocky, is a generous kind-hearted, happy man, who will do anything for his son. Jim’s long-winded friend, Angel, however, is chronically irresponsible and is always getting Jim into trouble. Realistically Rockford should give up on this conniving, seedy, little man. Regardless he continues to paint himself into a corner with questionable decisions that undermine his chances of success. Rockford lives in a trailer, by the beach. He loves his fishing rod. Jim drives a  firebird with bronze paint and is known for his ability to spin it out of trouble. He has to put together clues to solve cases. Jim is so persistent he is sometimes compared to a dog after a bone.

In addition to Rocky and Angel there is a large list of characters on the show. Beth is Rockford’s lawyer who helps him out when he is having an issue with the police. She is a clearly intelligent woman who is also head strong. Dennis is a friend, as well as a police sergeant with a biting personality. Jim also works alongside other private detectives. Lance believes he is better than most other private detectives because he is strikingly good looking. Lance is an academy-raised investigator. Gandy is another private detective who does not have the most subtle approach. He calls his counterpart Gabby a “jive turkey” while in the back of a car after a wedding. Gandy never wants to work by himself. While he appears to lack knowledge, appearances are deceptive. He made the grade while working with Jim. If more private investigators were like Gandy, Jim would not have been subject to marginalization.

After the 122nd episode the director had the set closed to the actors. He said, “The show was losing money.” Money is number one.

                       C-Flat of Memories
on top of                                                                                          the universe                                        Come!                                                                                             log on to
the bundling memories throughout the year:
in the bedroom
in the kitchen
in the cellar
over the garage
by ourselves.                                                                                         by yourself.
with broken bones
mushroom pizza                            chicken soup                                junk food
planning a feast:
recklessly stirred-gravy
home-cooked meals                           or                         store-bought supper?
Blood red Clamato juice
Thanksgiving theme.
more than I can contemplate
foolish thoughts, flamboyant memories
they sure create emotional spasms.
severely in my dreams, chaotic dreams
due to active cells, firing, firing, firing
however,
Mentality is an sweltering thermostat.
Nowhere is Somewhere . . .
Whose                                                                                      Memories?
Let me do it!
I know not what I do.
If only                                                                                          I knew!
Since I stepped on air
My mother                                                                                     said,
“Welcome”
My father                                                                                        said,
“Goodness”
I was like a luminous lantern.
Memories
are my musically inherited macaroons.

As a great lover of the English language, I have often found myself in the position of having to defend my mother tongue from the torrents of abuse levied at it by my distraught ELL students.  To them I praise English’s lexical flexibility, I hail its inherent euphony, and I adulate its allowance for descriptive precision.  But, for all of my efforts, I still find that my students complain ad nauseum that English is “too confusing!”  Despite my great love affair with English, I have to admit that there are some truly bizarre rules that make English a minefield to navigate, even for those with a rock solid grasp of grammar.  In researching this topic I discovered that many of these “rules” that snooty grammarians lord over their linguistic lessers are actually the products of nonsensical grammatical impositions by a group known as Latinists, and we have all been paying the price since.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Latinists attempted to “standardize” and presumably to “improve” English by applying Latin grammatical rules to it, despite the fact that English is emphatically Germanic; a bizarre episode in the chaotic history of English.  Robert Lowth–Anglican Bishop and terrible grammarian–wrote the first widely read English grammar book, in which he strictly prohibited dangling prepositions.  He claimed that, as preposition comes from the Latin word praepositio, meaning “to put before”, and the fact that prepositions cannot end a sentence in Latin, it is therefore ungrammatical to do so in English.  There is, however, a problem with this assertion: ENGLISH IS A GERMANIC LANGUAGE!!!!!!!!!!  So, while Lowth was imposing his nonsense “grammar”, great English writers continued to end their sentences with prepositions, as they have been doing since the 10th century.  

The same misguided Latinizations gave rise to this head scratcher of rule: don’t split your infinitives.  This one can be attributed to another pompous, ecclesiastical Englishman by the name of Henry Alford.  According to his grammar treatise A Plea for the Queen’s English, Alford mistakenly wrote that “to” was an essential part of an infinitive verb, when, actually, it is a prepositional marker and is often grammatically unnecessary (though normally included). In Latin an infinitive is one word and, therefore, cannot be split. Thus, the foolish Alford maintained that adverbs in between “to” and its infinitive was Latin-wrong and therefore must be English-wrong.  Well, Alford wrong.  

So the next time someone tries to nit-pick your grammar, you can tell them to quickly go and look their grammar rules up.

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