The angry grammarian accompanied his father to the doctor yesterday. As usual, one is sent to a room well in advance of the doctor's visit, where a nurse asks the same series of inane questions and shows little awareness of the real medical issues that have led to said visit. As a rule, no big deal, but at times these prep sessions with the nurse can lead to, shall we say, tense moments:
Nurse: Ok, John. You seen/seein' (impossible to decipher) him on the 11th (again, punctuation impossible to decipher; did we detect rising inflection, indicating a question about the future, or was this merely a statement about the past? The date, two weeks or so past 11 Dec and two weeks or so prior to 11 Jan, is of no help either).
John: The 11th?
Nurse: Yeah, you seen/seein' him on the 11th (.? ?? !?).
John: Umm, I'm not sure when I'm seeing him again.
Nurse: No, you SEEN him on the 11th. SEEN, past tense.
John: Oh, right, SEEN. Sure, I guess I saw him on the 11th.
So you can imagine that the grammarian was equal parts amused and mortified, and he awoke this morning hoping to have his faith in humanity restored. And where does one turn when one needs one's faith in humanity restored? The Price is Right, of course. And what did the grammarian find in the first pricing game, in which contestants bid on a 52" plasma TV? The following:
1st contestant: $550, Drew.
2nd contestant: $1200!
3rd contestant: $1300, Drew.
4th contestant: $1299, baby. Oh yeah!
The grammarian has SEEN enough, though he's afraid that he'll be seein' a lot more of the same in 2009.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The 1300 bid is bad enough (um, hi, what was it about 1201 that you didn't like?), but 1299?? Yikes. Reminds me of someone trying to spell innuendo backwards.
ReplyDelete