My Friday Night

So this is my Friday night:  My wife is getting a massage, my daughter is at swim practice, my son is watching The Backyardigans and I’m eating leftover fried rice, having a glass of Napa chardonnay and reading Lynn Troyka’s Simon & Schuster Handbook for Writers. I’m honestly embarrassed by the frequent and glaring grammatical errors in my writing.  My previous advisors and Doug have correctly dinged me on this, and though I have my grammarian wife proofread all my packets, the errors remain.  I am old enough to have diagrammed sentences.  I am old enough to have been taught grammar by rote.  I remember grammar lessons, but the problems linger like some psychic scar from my childhood.  Did I repress those lessons?  Did I simply memorize and forget them because I never imagined they’d matter?  Anyway, this is a cautionary tale, I suppose.  There are probably better ways to spend a Friday evening, though to be fully honest, I’m kind of enjoying myself.

—Richard Farrell