A New Semester -Or- Time To Put Mom Back On Suicide Watch

For those of you who don't know, my mother is an English professor at a small Midwestern community college somewhere. A creative writer herself--on top of being some sort of freaky grammatical prodigy--she could easily be working to inspire the next generation of poets and novelists, or at least the next generation of creepy manifesto authors. Most often, though, she's teaching high school graduates (now pay close attention--I did say high school graduates) that by putting words together, you can make a sentence! Wooooo!

My mom, having raised my brother, has become pretty accustomed to teaching people with the academic tendencies of, say, a sea cucumber. And she does it with unparalleled zeal--always coming up with wacky writing prompts and wearing costumes. But first day of class is always a killer for her. That's the day everyone must submit a paragraph so she can gauge how much improvement they need. I should mention that the main objective of this course is to be able to compose a full, comprehensible paragraph. That's...pretty much it. Which a person might think to be a pretty feasible task, until said person sees some of the unbelievable shit from the first day.

I rummage through these paragraphs like they're naked pictures of the Golden Girls--guiltily entertained, but always left sad and thinking "they're too old to be making mistakes like that". There's no other way to explain it but to show you one (no editing tricks, people, the real deal), the author to remain unnamed, and let you see for yourself. Before you start judging me, remember three words: high school graduates.

cats vs snakes

Both animals are good doing lots of thing but there are drffrents thing that set them apart. Both can cach other animals like mice rats rabots brids and each other. Both can life up to there repotashon and are fun to have. A cat can be good around little kids and they are vary playful and amusing to watch. A cat is a stress relever
after a hard day at work. you can train a cat to do almost anything and use it's head to get into things. A snake is an odd pet to have you only need to feed it one's every few weeks it needs sunlight to stay alive you need to keep it in a cage. for it does not eat your naybor anoying dog or cat. Which you mite be happy with they really do not needed alot of attchon gust food and water. You can get any size of snake that you want or what is leggal. With what ever your chosie is with picking out terdes your life stile that you live or whatever you want to creap people out with it's
you chose is.

Jeeeeeeeeeeesus. I know they taught us to "sound it out" if we didn't know how to spell something in grade school, so let's see how our author fared.

Rabots: Ooh, this one was close. Unless they were talking about some bionic rabbit, in which case it's totally correct.
Repotashon: Here's where shit gets weird. The only word that fits in context is reputation, in which case they're only SEVEN LETTERS OFF.
Attchon: Action? Attention? Achtung? Only one person knows. And that person, if I were to guess, is out huffing gasoline somewhere.
Terdes: I've got nothing, here. Picking out turds? Maybe the author is suggesting you pick out something with bowel movements that suit your particular lifestyle (may I suggest a rabot--they don't even poop!) Or maybe they meant "towards", in which case they're just...well, dumb.

While the author told me a lot of what I already knew about cats and snakes, I was excited to learn that you can train a cat to use it's head to get into things. That would be a stress-reliever.



Ahhhhhhh....I can just feel all of my worries slipping away.

From the looks of the paragraph, I think I know someone who could use a few curious trained cats this semester. Good luck, mom. I'll be by your place to pick up anything with a sharp edge that might be lying around.