The Various Uses of the English Language
Monday, January 16, 2006
[6:55am] Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday came about that bitterly cold morning: Collette rather wondered why kids weren’t allowed to take off school on Washington’s or even Lincoln’s! birthday. Perhaps they had been allowed at one point in history. Of course she was rather partial towards President Lincoln in the first place. But that was another matter. Meanwhile, OLeif and Collette were excited about the kids at youth who were desiring God, (as John Piper would say) – almost all of them. It was an encouraging thing to see within the church.
[7:16pm] The day was spent in the usual manner. Oatmeal cinnamon cake for breakfast while Linnea tried to get Frances to take his cold medicine so that he would feel better quickly. Mom and Linnea went off to Linnea’s piano lesson, each with their own thermos of hot drink: Mom with cappuccino and Linnea with Ovaltine. She looked so cute with her little missing tooth, her hair back in a green pony tail band to match her chubby little sweater, and jeans and tennis shoes, carrying her stack of piano books in one arm, and her big thermos in the other. Her little cheeks were so soft and she was just a little bundle, “as mischievous as a kitten on a skate.” Later, Collette listened to another sermon from Johnny O., bellowing against the “plastic church,” and:
“It’s not all going to be sunshine and applesauce, folks, or whatever…”
Collette loved his preaching. Joe left for work, and Collette fell asleep on the couch after eating two of Carrie’s wonderful warm peanut butter cookies, while watching “Donald Duck” with Frances. Meanwhile, Carrie-Bri and Rose sat in the big recliner and read insults to each other from Rose’s vocabulary book:
“Carrie, you’re extemp-extemporaneous!”
Laugh, laugh, laugh…
“And, Rose, you’re… flaccid.”
Laugh, laugh, laugh…
“Well, Carrie, you’re fastidious!”
Laugh, laugh, laugh…
“Yeah, and you’re extraneous!”
Guffaws…
And it was Chinese for dinner over the Golden Globes that night for OLeif and Collette. Once again, Collette thought about Hollywood and wondered… She was, as well, impressed with their general good use of English grammar. Upon hearing the acceptance speech of an actor who once played the grumpy gentleman in Sense in Sensibility, Collette listened absently while typing.
“He’s using some pretty good grammar,” she said to OLeif. “Oops,” she said, hearing him end a sentence with a preposition. “He messed up there.”
Immediately following that same sentence, he paused, and said rather boringly, “I could have said that sentence more correctly.” Or something to that effect; it always rather ruined the moment when the exact quote could not be remembered.
“[Death is] the very best of all our gospel ordinances.” – Puritan, Thomas Shepherd