Oh, mvg, sweetheart, you know exactly what I meant.

I may be a lot of things, but a c***tease is not one of them.

And I would never wear a yellow halter top and fishnet pants. I prefer classy sexiness as opposed to the slutty variety.

Okay, let’s stop now. Ha, ha!

And by “rile” you mean…?

You aren’t wearing a yellow halter top & fishnet pants by any chance?

Oh lord, this must stop now before we end up in Luann territory & someone takes a dive to the sidewalk.

Dan, darling, you are definitely my friend!

Oh, my god, what is mvg going to have to say about this? (I confess I added the “darling” just to rile him up.)

But very seriously, thanks for the affirmation. I needed it…

Perhaps “rule” was the wrong word for me to use. But, damn, by that time I was getting so tired I could barely think straight (some might say I never think straight!), and my writing probably reflected that.

I stilll hold to my position, though, “educated English speakers/writers” notwithstanding. Perhaps when I’ve recovered a bit from Josh’s jumping down my throat, you and I can discuss the matter a bit, if you’re interested. Or not. Maybe it’s time to let this thing die a natural death, huh?

One of my pet peeves (since Josh has his) is that I have two sons, one in elementary and one in middle school. I have volunteered quite a bit in their classrooms over the years and, if their teachers are any indication, our educational system is in trouble, big time. They make grammatical mistakes constantly when speaking to their students. How do you like these apples:

“Is everyone in their seat?” (or: “seats” — they mix things up every which way. No consistent agreement at all.)

“None of the pencils are sharpened.” (Maybe you disagree with me that this one’s incorrect.)

“I wish there was…

“If there was…”

“Somebody forgot their lunchbox.”

And please don’t get me started on splitting infinitives.

I could go on and on (and, unfortunately, on) but you get the idea. Just for your amusement, though, here are a couple of extras!

When my older son was in second grade, the class had a substitute teacher one day. She was a young student fresh from the university right down the road, working on her teaching credential. Sadly for her, it just happened to be my day to volunteer that week.

Well, there we were, studying hard, when she decided that it was spelling time! Yippee! All the children gathered on the rug in a semicircle and she began giving them words to spell.

It went like this: she would think of a word, say it aloud, and ask whoever thought he could spell it to raise his hand. Everything was going along swimmingly until she picked the word “cactus.”

Perkily she said, “Now, children, I’m sure someone can spell ‘cactus’ for me!”

One (very smart, I might add) little girl raised her hand and began, albeit hesitantly this time. She started:

“C”

“Yes!” said the teacher, ever so encouragingly.

“A”

“Yes, again!”

“T”

Now you are not going to believe what this woman did (actually, you can probably see it coming a mile away).

“Yes!” she cheered.

I forgot to add that she was even writing the letters on the board as the children said them, and she didn’t catch the mistake.

I no longer recall whether I let this charade continue until the end of the word or whether I interrupted right then and there, but you better believe I set things straight. These are the people who are teaching the next generation??? They’re not even educated themselves, for God’s sake.

By the way, when I went to the office to let them know of the incident (I told them that the girl was really very nice, but not yet qualified to be in the classroom on her own), they totally blew me off. I don’t know what that says about our educational system, but it ain’t good.

One more example and then I’ll let you escape my clutches:

Last year, my fourth grader’s teacher consistently dropped her “g’s.” She was always “goin’ and comin’ and doin’.” It drove me nuts. Sigh…