grammar

If I had to name one single thing that I missed about my life in New York, it would be my wonderful New York gym. It was just a few blocks from our apartment, loaded with all of the newest and nicest equipment, and basically always empty. Sure, the completely saturated workout facility market in New York must be tough on the owners, but it worked in our favor. I am told that John Travolta worked out at our gym, though I never saw him there and although it doesn’t seem like he spends a lot of time on the treadmill. In any case, it was nice.

Our new gym in Missoula is located in a strip mall, has some working equipment, and is populated by the same five guys who are always standing around not quite lifting anything. I mean, it’s not so bad. Part of the issue is that I’ve been having knee problems the last few months and I’m stuck on the stationary bike a lot, something that Ben describes as only being marginally better exercise than sitting on the couch. Worse, though, is that the stationary bikes at this gym have the following written on them:

“Stop exercising if you feel pain, faint, dizzy, or out of breath.”

Yeah. I know. A parallel structure nightmare. And I have to stare at it for 30 minutes a day. It’s like driving by a flaming seven-vehicle car crash that you can’t help but stare at, except that it’s with nouns and adjectives. It’s a word crash.

Now, I’m not a grammar expert by any stretch of the imagination, but this sentence follows me through the day like a terrible parallel structure ghost, shaking its chains and turning my blood cold with its crappy sentence balance. Whenever I’ve made a list in my head lately, it sounds something like:

“I need to mail those thank-you notes, buy some silverware, and pain.”

Or:

“Today I’m writing two press releases, some brochure copy, out of breath, and two web pages.”

I also often imagine a terrifying world in which people talked like that and it went totally unnoticed. For example, I might imagine a man sitting in a doctor’s office and explaining that his symptoms make him feel “faint and pain.” Or I think about two joggers finishing up a marathon, where one of them turns and says, “I’m dizzy,” and the other one says, “I’m pain.”

If you are thinking, “why don’t you just look somewhere other than the tiny 8-point font grammar mistake written on the bike, like maybe, for instance, at the TV directly in front of the bike? Or even the wall?” then I don’t think we’ll ever truly understand one another.

I like grammar. I might not be among (not between, although amongst is also correct if not a little archaic) the best and brightest, but I like to think I know my way around a sentence. It wasn’t a formal part of my school curriculum, but my mom knows her stuff about words and, as recently as yesterday, continues to keep me on the straight and narrow:

Not to be critical about your blog, but you should be using the possessive form of pronouns modifying present participles. I know that everyday English has become sloppy, but I think it sounds better in its correct form.

For example:  my being (not me being) or his giving (not him giving)Professor Aswell

And so we come to yesterday afternoon, when I was discussing Monday Night Football with a coworker. I said, “The game was close when I went to bed. I wasn’t that emotionally involved in it. I guess I like to see the Saints win, although I could care less about the Titans.”

To which my coworker, whom (not who) I should mention I like a lot, said, “What you meant to say was, ‘I couldn’t care less about the Titans’.”

To which I held myself back from saying, “No, what I meant to say was don’t tell me what I meant to say.”

So. Could I care less about the Titans? Yes. Let’s say Vince Young had a season-ending injury - then I would care less about watching the team. Or if a better game were on a different channel at the same time - then I would care less about the Titans. And the use of the word although in my sentence implies (not infers) that I feel lukewarm about both teams.

I guess my point is that even though some people confuse the two sentences doesn’t mean that the phrase I could care less doesn’t exist at all as a correct sentence at some points in time. It could mean, “I care more than I might, even though I barely care,” or, “If I really dug deep and put some effort in, I could find it in myself to care less. But it would really be a struggle.”

I find the same phenomenon has popped up concerning when to say “me” and when to say “I” when referring to you and another person. There’s been a lot of overcorrection towards “I” in the last few years. I think it’s because so many moms and English teachers corrected us, and we didn’t think long enough about why. Even though it’s correct to say, “Sarah and I went to the store,” it isn’t correct to say, “The teacher talked to Sarah and I.” All you have to ask yourself is, am I the subject of the sentence or not?

Well, I can feel this entry quickly devolving into an aggravated lecture. I guess the point is that we could all care more — not only about the rules of grammar, but about how and why the rules are in place. Perhaps we couldn’t care more. I’m not really sure.