Um, how do you spell skeerd?

 

By Joe Walther

 

Dear Dr. Walther, the letter began. It continued, “. . . being that you are in a position of significant influence, we would like to seek your help in reaching our goal of feeding millions of starving children.”  It continued, loaded with illiterate clichés to the point of nausea. The lead sentence in the concluding paragraph, “We are so very anxious for you to join us in this crusade.” Mercifully, the letter ended, but not before this gem of a final sentence: “It is not known how many people we can help when people like you get involved.”

 

            As a standard practice, I NEVER respond to such letters or emails. My reasons for this are obvious, but I’m not going into them here. Instead, I’m going to take advantage of the opportunity such letters provide for me to rant about um, you know… crappy writing.

 

            I do not possess writing credentials. People who expend the effort to acquire English degrees, particularly the PhD, do it because they are, well, OK, I have no idea why they do it. Trust me on this, obtaining a PhD in Astrophysics, Astrobiology, Chemistry, Mathematics, or any of the Engineering disciplines, is substantially easier than English. I have a friend who has a Masters in English and he seems to be in a perpetual state of pain. Also, the person who wrote the letter I’ve referred to here—P. Jackson Dillard—does not have an English degree, either. I’m willing to put myself on the spot and say that, if he has a degree at all, it only strengthens a growing body of evidence that idiots get though the system.

 

            I learned to write because the Sisters of Perpetual Pain—most notably—Sr. Helena, Sr. Magdalene, and Sr. Charles-Edwards. They scared the hell out of me. They could draw blood with a ruler’s edge without even being in the room. Those of us who violated grammar rules, sentence structure, and spelling, even accidentally, found ourselves bleeding from the knuckles in short order. Mom and dad couldn’t help, either, because they were just as afraid of those nuns as we were. Man, I hated those nuns then, but now I remember them with fondness, love and admiration.

 

            In Catholic high school, Father Spragg picked up where the nuns left off. Of course, he assumed that we knew how to express thoughts in complete sentences without spelling errors. It was a reasonable assumption for him because, back then, students didn’t get out of elementary school without knowing how to do these things. This provided Fr. Spragg with the opportunity to move us to ever-higher writing skills.

 

            I was not fond of Fr. Spragg, either. He was older than dirt and mean. He had been in charge of the Inquisition back in the Middle Ages and he LOVED his work. We could tell this because he had a temper that even God wouldn’t mess with and his eyes glazed over at the mere mention of the word pain. He hated the misuse of adjectives, such as using “anxious” to mean “eager” as P. Jackson Dillard did above. The only thing he hated more was the use of passive voice under any circumstances. He convinced all of us that our parents and the school board had given him the authority to electrocute anyone who violated his rules.

 

            The fact is that none of us would have even considered using such terms as “being that” because, along with their cousins: “being as”, “being as how’, “seeing that”, “seeing as”, and “seeing as how”, fall just short of being grammatical felonies but definitely rank up there with snoring during the ballet! Actually, I rather undergo a vasectomy with a weed whacker than attend the ballet; but you get the idea.

 

            The good sisters in elementary school, along with that nasty-tempered old coot in high school, made it possible for the late Dr. Alma Kindrick, to teach me how to write. Dr. “A”, as we called her, did not teach grammar, sentence structure, or vocabulary. She didn’t have to because students who didn’t already know these things, did NOT get into college, let alone into her writing class.

 

            Dr. Kindrick was one of a kind. A spelling error, other than an obvious typo, was grounds for an immediate “F” for the assignment. She would tolerate a maximum of two grammatical errors, but even one eliminated any chance of receiving an “A” on the assignment. Also, she never crossed things out on a paper. She would simply write her choice of expression above or below the ones we submitted. She encouraged all of us to feel comfortable on the page and to write the way we would speak. She even encouraged us to make up a word or two as long as its meaning was clear in context.

 

            There was nothing mean, stuffy, or scary about Dr. “A.” She was perky, outgoing, and a fantastic teacher. I read her obituary a couple of days ago. I happened to spot it when I linked to a small town newspaper that links to my column. I regret never having told her how much I admired her and how much she taught me. So, I’ll tell all of you in the hope that, if you know someone like her, you’ll tell them before they die.

 

            Dr. Alma Kindrick was an awesome human being—totally, incredibly, unbelievably amazing. Had she been an actor, she would have won every award possible. At the very least her students should have presented her with one of those huge trophies…the kind with a ginormous GOLD-plated person perched atop a wooden block with a golden plate that reads, Dr. Alma Kindrick—the most awesome person EVER! Also note that ginormous is not a word, but Dr. “A” gave me the license to make things up.

 

            That’s it for this week. If you have a clue on November 7^th, make sure you vote. Otherwise, stay home. Unlike others who encourage EVERYONE to vote, I don’t. The country is in deep doo doo nowadays. Part of the problem is that too many stupid people are voting. Knock it off; there must be something on TV that you could watch instead.

 

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send your comments. Just click here.