Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Weird Al, Grammar Hero

OK, I'm late at becoming a dedicated watcher of YouTube.  However, my son brought the following Weird Al videos to my attention:

1.  Al at the grocery store; and 2.  Al on highway patrol.

I love these videos!  Thanks to the efforts of Mrs. Mongerson, Mrs. Reid, and Mrs. Cronk, some of my former teachers, items such as the signs Weird Al corrected have been annoying me for years.  Just ask my children.  I've been nagging them about less/fewer errors (and perhaps one or two other examples of incorrect grammar usage) for years.  Weird Al's videos may have been tongue-in-cheek, but I'm rejoicing that such a wordsmith notices grammar errors, too.

My dad was the son of a man who was the only child of a 19th-century schoolteacher.  (She graduated from Chicago High School in 1870 before that urban school system began deteriorating.)  Grammar correction was a given at our dinner table, probably because it was a staple of my dad's dinner table while he was growing up.  I suspect my grandfather had the same dinnertime experience while he was growing up.  Until I started preparing for the SATs and ACTs, I failed to recognize the advantage this gave me in school.  (And, I had thought Dad was just being irksome.)

Of course, I tried to repeat, much less successfully, these dinnertime lessons with my own children, who received them with the same joy I had.  But, if Weird Al cares, maybe there's still hope.

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