May, 2008

SYNONYM (noun): A Word Used In Place Of The One You Can't Spell

I plopped onto the couch, arms folded above my bulk and pouting. "Not fair."

Evelyn laughed. "Who told you that life is fair?"

"'Fair' is where yuh takes your pig and gets a blue ribbon," Lily drawled. From his desk, Ducky snorted faintly.

"But how will Charlie—or Peanut!—learn proper grammar without diagramming sentences?" I wailed.

Charlie looked up from her spot on the floor where she was doing her English homework on the coffee table—homework that had started this whole discussion. "Sentence diagramming didn't come into being until the mid-nineteenth century," she said in a reasonable tone.

"The last quarter-century—though there had been some notable work beforehand," Ducky interjected.

"True," Charlie agreed with a slight inclining of her head. Kindred spirits, those two.

"We managed without diagramming sentences until then. I'm sure Charlotte and—Peanut—will be fine without learning how to graph grammar."

"Yeah, the literacy of the Dark Ages pops to mind," I said in a mildly sarcastic tone. He just shook his head and went back to his computer. "Come on. Underlining and line-offs and—" I caught Ev's repressed amusement. "Okay, it wasn't fun when we had to do it, but it's a valuable skill."

"It had gone the way of the dinosaurs when I got to school," Ev said cheerfully.

I gasped. "No. No way."

"Yep. Lily and I missed New Math, too."

I shuddered. Base 8 New Math had screwed up my basic math skills something fierce.

"You can't take three from two, two is less than three, so you at the four in the eights place," Lily chanted. It's scary how well we can all recite Tom Lehrer songs. "Now, that's really four eights, so you make it three eights, regroup, and you change an eight to eight ones, and you add them to the two, and you get one-two base eight, which is ten base ten, and you take away three, that's seven. Okay?"

"Hooray for New Math," I half-sang sourly, quoting the chorus of the song. "But back to the topic—"

"You're worried that without Sister Mary Elephant standing over with a steel-edged yardstick at hand, beating noun-verb-predicate into your kid, you'll be hearing 'I don't got no homework' in ten years," L:ily diagnosed.

"Well—"

"Have you ever heard Charlie say anything even remotely like that?"

"No, but—"

"She has never had a class in diagramming sentences. Has Evvie—or have I—ever used anything but standard, grammatical English—unless it's to drive home a point?"

"No, but—"

"We have never had classes in diagramming sentences." She flapped her hands over in a "well?" gesture. "There you go," she said, in a perfect imitation of Michael Constantine in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

"We all fruit," I quoted back. I had a sudden, unpleasant vision of my brain exploding while trying to break my kid of saying, "Me do it!" I think I'm just going to have the baby… and run away from home. Alone.

/ / / / /

It was a hot, muggy day. I was stubbornly driving myself to and from the store, telling Ducky that it would be just our luck that he'd catch a case right before my close time and I'd be cooling my heels until midnight. But this was one of the days when I was wishing I had a chauffeur.

No chauffeur, but a first-rate chef. When I got home, Ducky had already arrived and was three-fourths through making dinner. (And with the heat of the day, cold tuna tarragon salad sounded fabulous.) "You might want to check my desk," he said casually, draining the egg noodles. "There seems to be a bag with your name on it."

Ooh. Treats. Cool beans! I waddled off to the office, hoping for something chocolate (but happy to get anything). In the middle of Ducky's desk was a big, bright purple bag with "The Learning Curve" on it. Inside: a couple of Mad Libs notepads; a hardback book, "Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog"; a children's game, "Silly Sentences"; a couple of 8-1/2x11 workbooks ("Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives, Oh My!" and "Diagramming Sentences Can Be FUN!"); and a pad of paper with preprinted sentence diagrams. I cocked my head and looked skeptically at the kitchen door. Is he poking fun at me… or getting with the program? Hmm.

There was also a box of truffles from Charlotte's Chocolates.

Life is good.

/ / /

It's amazing what you forget over time. Use it or lose it, that's for sure.

While we sat around the coffee table that night, I discovered I could whip out the basics—nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs—but stumbled over things like adverbial clauses, split infinitives (beyond "to boldly go," I mean) and the like. Oh,well. So much for Mrs. Gardner in third grade through Mr. Kelley in the eighth and all that damned diagramming. I still love the James Joyce poster at the store.

But we had fun. "Silly Sentences" was geared toward 1-3 year olds, according to the box. Cards were color coded—nouns one color, verbs another, adjectives a third and so on, and they all had jigsaw puzzle-type tabs to connect one word to the next. The instructions suggested that you start with simple, logical sentences for small children ("The frog jumped." "The green frog jumped.") and work your way up to nonsense. We cut right to the chase and tried to make each other lose it. Evelyn won, hands down. Was anyone surprised? No, we were not.

But Mother won her own prize. It was Suzy's turn to write down the parts of speech, filling in the "Mad Libs" blanks. After we had finished throwing out words, she pulled the fill in the blanks sheet out and slipped it under the template… and froze.

"You know, it's awfully late," she said with a semi-stifled yawn. "I need to hit the road."

"Read it, quickly," I said, yawning as well. Yawns are more contagious than colds. Even if the first one was a little suspect.

"Nah…" She shoved the paper in her purse and hustled to her feet. "You're painting the nursery this weekend?"

Perfect deflection. Lily, Ev and Charlie fell into a not-quite heated debate (Ducky and I were willing to have them spearhead the project with only two stipulations: no heavy on the pink or blue and we make the final decision) and Ducky and I walked Suzy to her car (Mother was helping the décor discussion by describing Ducky's nursery from decades ago).

"Okay, spill it," I teased.

Opening the station wagon's front door, she shook her head. "I know it's luck of the draw what word ends up where it does, and Victoria didn't plan any of her answers…" She shook her head again and slipped inside the car.

"Mrs. Bailey…" Ducky drew out, mock-sternly.

She tipped her head and looked up at us. "Nope. Uh-uh. No way, José. Negatory." She turned the key and the mighty V-8 engine roared to life. "I'm going to burn it in the kitchen sink…" She put the car into reverse. "…and bleach my eyeballs!" With a cheery wave and a promise to see us bright and early, she drove off.

Ducky sighed. "Trust Mother to do something vile." There was no anger in his words; maybe a little resigned amusement.

"Heck, I've donated some all-too-right—or wrong, depending on your view—words to the mix. And she didn't do it on purpose," I chided.

"No… if it had been on purpose, it would have been much, much worse."

I remembered the last time Gibbs came to dinner and repressed a wince. The fact that he has a very forgiving nature—regarding Mother, anyway—made me sure his last visit wasn't the last visit he'd make. "But she is your mother, and we love her," I said, hoping I didn't sound too prim or didactic.

He smiled down at me. "Yes. We do."

I bumped my forehead against his. "Package deal, y'know."

He patted the beach ball under my t-shirt. "Package deal."