Many teenagers ask themselves "What can I do to alienate my friends, scare off potential friends, and get pushed into the pool by irritated swim team coaches?" The answer is simple: become annoyingly obsessed with correcting other people's grammar.
TRUE FACT: When I was thirteen, I told my swim coach that the word she was looking for was 'acronym', not 'annagram'. Even then, I though this was an error most severe, and was shocked that a grown-up would make such a mistake. She pushed me into the deep end of the pool.
I blame my mother for this severe character flaw. I remember watching Caillou on PBS. Every once in a while (but frequently enough for my mom to notice) the narrator would say "Caillou felt badly." This annoyed my mom to no end. She would come into the room and tell the TV that by saying "Caillou felt badly" they were insinuating that Caillou was, to a certain extent, unable to feel, or that he was just bad at feeling. What they meant to say was that he felt bad. Soon I began to make corrections myself. So began a long and illustrious career of E.J., badge-holding member of the grammar police (really. My friend e-mailed it to me.)
TRUE FACT: Once, I was reading a first draft of a fellow grammar nazi's story. I started to say something about how her verb tenses didn't agree, and when I refused to stand down on the subject (probably not the best idea) she threatened to slap me in the face.
It doesn't even stop at correcting real-life people's grammar. People in movies and on TV have poor grammar too.
TRUE FACT: I have been told by my friends that they would duct-tape my mouth shut if I didn't stop correcting the grammar of a movie character.
This is possibly the reason all my friends are nerds, and that I don't have a boyfriend.
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