Driven to Distraction
A few of you have asked me how driver's ed is going for Em. And even if you didn't ask, i'm a gonna tell ya.
The first day of class a parent was required to go with her, (this is not your father's driver's ed!) so we could be all supportive of their techniques and shit. Since the Mister was in San Francisco, that parent was me.
We sat down in a small room heated by the breath of 20 hormone cases and their parents. A sign on the whiteboard read: Welcome to SWERVE. We're glad your here.
My little grammar nazi looks at the board and says, "i can't stand it."
"Well then, go fix it, but be aware that this will brand you as the class smart ass," i say. The man next to me starts laughing.
"I don't care. That's pathetic!" Em grabs a marker and goes up and fixes the message.
When she sits back down, the man who was laughing asks her, "Feel better now?"
"YES!" Em declares.
And so it began.
Thanks for asking.
49 comments:
You have my empathy and best wishes. Nothing like letting your teen drive you around with your eyes closed. If you open your eyes you will freak out! Trust me. My 18yo now has his license and my 16yo is still in driver's ed.
Good for Em, your little "grammar nazi"...poor grammar drives me to distraction. I'm forever proofreading everything in my sight and it's amazing how many mistakes I find. Now...about her driving...
Good for her! I want to meet this Nazi! By the way, I am having a contest, check it out!
whew! that was bugging the crap out of ME, and I wasn't even there!!!
hi there! stopped by here after seeing you at egan's par-tay!
good luck with driver's ed! the grammar would have annoyed me too!
Wait! They want to teach your daughter to drive? They can't even spell. Danger Will Robinson, Danger!
Very good for Em. That kind of stuff drives me nuts. A group that I belong to on Facebook says it all: "I judge you when you use poor grammar". :-)
Good luck with the co-pilot nerves.
janice, you've had to go through this TWICE? What's the secret? Valium?
joan, the latest thing i have been noticing is lose vs. loose and breath vs. breathe. Auugghh.
toni, she's pretty militant about it sometimes. It's funny.
emily, i guess i've just given up. People out their don't know there grammar. ;-)
brookem, that was fun! What a great idea. Thanks for the invite.
ttq, I KNOW! That's why i have been driving with her quite a bit.
gordo, i know i am not alone with this peeve, but i swear it's getting worse. I judge too. but i would never admit it.
I like your kid more and more!
I'm with Em! That and apostrophes in plural words make me squirm :)
Peace,
~Chani
I have to agree. Shit like that is intolerable, y'all. See, I even put the apostrophe in y'all even though I'm all southernly like.
ellie, she's pretty funny, and oh so opinionated. Must be from the Mister's side of the gene pool.
chani, oh that annoy's us too! :)
liv, i saw someone type that word as ya'll the other day. Unclear on the concept of the apostrophe.
do you get to watch those movies too? i remember Red Cement or something like that, showing teenagers crashing cars. great educational film as part of learning to drive. or scaring the hell out of you. or both.
How does Em feel about the use of the non-word 'nother' instead of another? Good for her for setting the idiot right. Does SWERVE stand for something or is it just some sick play on words? Is drivers training (where she actually drives) a different class?
Wow, you managed to write a post about driver's ed that had absolutely no driving in it - now that takes talent!
LOL!
Oh crikey, totally empathise...it is something I do....and get called smartarse!
Good for Em.
Pam
Driver's Ed. What a bad memory.
I wasn't allowed to get my license until I turned a jaded 18 (Having been a teenaged alcoholic, with one friend already in the cemetary due to a drinking-related accident, my parents were firm on that one).
Tony actually taught me to drive on his Pontiac Sunbird. What's a new clutch when you're in love? I still had to take the classes to get the break on insurance rates.
The guy teaching the classroom portion was one off those wink-wink "we're sooooo cool" idiots that ended the first session by lighting a candle before talking about drinking and driving. I went up at the end of class and told him what a farce that was and that his whole attitude was inappropriate for underage kids. (It was like that speaker in CO that Chani blogged about, the idea that "you're going to do it anyway, so here's how to be cool about it.") He was taken aback, to say the least.
Go Em! I am not a grammar nazi, but that is one of my pet peeves too. That, and people who mix up lose/loose - I just don't get it...
Now, when it comes to "its" or "it's" - I have to slow down myself.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! That's FANTASTIC! She's a braver woman than I: I'd probably have suffered in silence, hoping that SWERVE was an acronym for something....
Just as an aside...
"liv, i saw someone type that word as ya'll the other day. Unclear on the concept of the apostrophe."
Did you see this on my teacher site? Someone wrote a comment, correcting something I said, and put up not only that apostrope error, but a subject/verb agreement error, as well. It was ALL I could do not to point that out....
jen, i only had to go to the first class, so no crash movies for me.
lynn, i don't think i've ever heard/seen her use 'nother. I'll have to ask if SWERVE is an acronym. I just don't know. She drives separately but within the aegis of this school.
jay, the driving part is TOO SCARY!
Pam, that's my girl! She is worse than i am, with the assurance of youth on her side.
de, you rock! Good for you for telling him off. And you would know.
qt, i can't be a real grammar nazi myself because i don't know everything. But that doesn't stop me very often. :)
mrs.chili, i don't remember exactly where i saw that ya'll. It might have been there. Weird huh?
I would have done exactly the same thing. (And, yes, I have had the rep of classroom smart ass, LOL.)
Mrs. Chili: Where is your teacher site?!
Well, at least all her I's are dotted and her T's are crossed. That's a start.
good girl. that stuff drives me nuts.
Huh, I dont get it. Is their something Im missing with you're post Meno? It appears you're daughter has some sort of chip on her shoulder. Wait, that's not a good thing to say. My bad. Joke over!
Eats Shoots and Leaves.
Some of us get bugged, and some don't.
ortizzle, i don't even bother anymore as people view me as a snob when i complain about this stuff.
sari, i hope the detail-orientedness will transfer to her driving skills.
u-u, there's a bbg place up at our local mall at which Em won't eat because the sign outside says "The Way Barbeque is Suppose To Taste."
egan, You're implying that my daughter has a chip on her shoulder shows what a looser you are. Just take a deep breathe.
amusing, Em loved that book.
I'm glad you loved it. When oh when do I get to meet you and Em? Now I'm being persistent.
Ha! I see she takes after you not at all.
:-$
I need to send Em a copy of our county weekly newspaper. She'd have a field day.
For instance, today's issue talked about "waving" fees for using the county dump.
Love. Her.
Given my current use of un-conjugated verbs and backwards sentences in French, my inner nazi has become much more tolerant. It was always tolerant of the its it's issue. But sometimes when I read a commercial website that is based in English and full of bad grammar it makes my skin crawl.
Good for her!
egan, send me an e-mail, I'd love to meet you. menoblog@gmail.com. You can meet me, but not Em, at least in the beginning...although she IS of babysitting age.
jennifer, sadly, she is much like me, except happier, which is cool.
ac, she would get all twitterpated over that, in a secretly enjoying it sort of way.
maggie, if it is someone's second language, i forgive anything. But native English speakers....shudder. Did you get my e-mail?
reflecting pool, i agree. :)
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first grammar correction." That's the real quote, seems the original was confused in translation.
Girl after my gramatically-correct heart. <3
Amusing beat me to the "Eats Shoots and Leaves" comment, but that's OK. I bow to her genius, and yours. And Em's.
But, yanno, the rules are meant to be broken.
Like Em, I would have found that distracting. You would think, I take the time to proofread my own blog and comments ; )
When I was working for a printer, we had an incompetent proofreader. We reprinted jobs because Public Notices became Pubic Notices... Spell check cannot do the job alone.
Hooray for your little grammar nazi!
Yes thank you. I'm getting more and more excited!
hi.
Bad grammar does not denote a bad person.
Em is so funny! Good for her. She's an excellent writer.
How's her driving coming along?
I betting on an acronym... but hey, I am the world's worst speller so maybe I'll just start using that excuse!
"That's not mis-spelled- that's an acronym!" But then I would have to think quick and be witty with what whatever it might stand for. Oh hell I will just put up with being corrected.
oh this should be fun
Cool Meno, I will send you an email and see what we can work out. I totally understand your hesitation with Em, point taken. I like that you mention how she's of babysitting age.
irrelephant. i've never heard it put that way before, but it certainly makes sense.
princess, there's lots of grammar errors to be militant about in this country. Keeps her on her toes.
mamalujo, many rules are meant to be broken, but i think one needs to know them first. Then break away
ms. chica, heh heh. I bet you have lots of stories like that from working with a printer.
lisa, she is a source of much amusement around here.
maggie, so when are you arriving? (i forgot exactly when.) And ME TOO!
bo, hi back to you. What's going on, you are awfully quiet. You must be having a life.
luckyzmom, i hope not, because that would make me a bad person sometimes.
schmoopie, she's doing fairly well. But it scares her and we have to almost force her to drive anywhere.
cheesy, i am not a very good speller either. I have dictionary.com as one of my favorites. :)
flutter, driver's ed? Fun? Hmmmm.
egan, sounds good.
As a teacher, I might have had to do the same...only use a red marker!
I'm with Em. Maybe she'll get as big a kick out of this as I did:)
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