IS YOU SATISFIED?

Attention, class!! Today is National Grammar Day!! English teachers, unite! (Even the retired ones.) When I tuned in to the Rock Channel on TV this morning, though, the first song lyrics I heard were The Rolling Stones', “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction….” Agony. It’s going to be a long day. I hate it when people make millions from butchering our language!

I have to blame Mama Bore for turning me into a grammar geek. When I was a kid, she was forever correcting my speech. I had the tendency to end interrogative sentences with prepositions, as in: “Where are you going to?” “Where’s it at?” She would respond to such queries like so: “After the to.” and “After the at.” Jeesh! Give me a break! At least I wasn’t walking around constantly singing that old song, “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby?”!!

Once I became an English teacher, my whole perspective changed. The most despised mistake in my grammar book was (cringe) misplacing “saw” with “seen.” I always told my students on the first day of school that if one of them came up to me and said, “Hey, Ms. Evans, I seen you jogging last night,” I would flip. Some responded by committing the sin on purpose, just to make my blood pressure hit the roof. Hearing something like, "Me and Mom had a fight last night, so I didn't do my homework" hurt my ears, while that Stoned Mick Jagger and his use of double negatives caused heartburn. Aaaiiiiieeeee!

I must admit, though, that formal speech/writing in school is much different than scribbling out song lyrics. Lyricists may use poor grammar just to get the words to fit into a specific cadence or rhyme scheme. “I Can’t Get Any Satisfaction” or “I Have No Satisfaction” don’t work very well (not, good) with the beat of the song; thus, I’m going to chill out and give musicians special permission to continue mucking up the grammar in their songs. Mick, you preening loudmouth, you won’t get no flak from me today. Class dismissed.

Happy National Grammar Day to everyone else. May your participles never dangle!