I want to ask him, "Did you mean,'Happy Mother's Day to you'or were you going for the Joey, from Friends style, 'Happy Mother's Day, you.' said with a wry smile and an ironic wink?
Just lately I've become very protective of 'little words', as we used to call them. Charades taught us how important and how many of them they were. At Christmas, you'd pull 'Out of Africa' from the Charade hat, sigh and hold three fingers up.
"Three words."
You nodded and held one finger up.
"First word."
More nodding followed by holding your thumb and forefinger close together.
"Little word."
Nodding. Then a shouted list of small words from all directions would elicite furious shaking of the head.
"The, in, and, of, he, she, it, him, her, on, to, off, up."
Eventually, you might get to, "out," slapping one finger on your nose, pointing to the person who said it with the other hand, hoping you hadn't made your nose bleed, before repeating the process again.
As soon as the family had guessed 'out of' you were there and the relief of not having to mime 'Africa' was overwhelming.
Now that I'm a grumpy I find myself correcting these little words in people's speech. I can't help it.
I shout at the TV, "Go to Argos! It's an imperative statement you stupid advertisers, you are trying to get people to go to the shop, you are not cheering the blooming shop on. It's a shop, it doesn't have the power of movement so it can't go anywhere!"
Phew! It's exhausting but I have to do it - everytime it's on.
Whenever a presenter says, "We could of seen that," I am compelled to shout 'Have, have. We could have seen that!"
These poor little words. What have they ever done to be treated so badly? A small word preservation society might be a good idea but some idiot would undoubtedly mangle 'word' and we would end up preserving the Disney ride with the annoying tune.
I'm not particularly fond of my trait of compulsively correcting people's speech. It reminds me of an old physics teacher I used to have. She would repeat back almost everything anyone said to her with a correction. She taught PE, as well as physics and looked as though she would win any race or fight. I was quite scared of her and always tried to avoid any conversation. One day, in the fifth form it was unavoidable.
"Miss, I have to go and see Hope-Simpson for my careers talk."
Her arms folded aggressively across her ever expanding menopausal breast, head tilted to one side. "May I go to see Mr Hope-Simpson for my careers talk?"
And here I made the worst mistake of my life. One that I am still ashamed of today.
"Well, you can if you want but I think he's expecting me and I would have thought you were too old for careers advice."
Now matter how hard I try I can not remember what happened next.
On Friday, feeling particularly grumpy, dressed in a Pikachu onesie I succumbed to a rant about small words.
"Miss, Can I go for the toilet?"
"No."
His shoulders sloped down and he went to turn.
"Can I go to the toilet?" I corrected.
Luckily, he wasn't cursed with my wit and he just looked at me and scratched his head, frozen on one foot, unsure of whether to go back to his place to keep waiting for his computer to log on or scuttle off to empty his bored
bladder.
"You see, you need to use the little words properly. You can't go for the toilet because the toilet isn't here and even if it was it couldn't go instead of you. You could go for a pee but as you used the word toilet then the little word needs to be to."
He still looked at me blankly.
"You used the wrong preposition."
"Oh. Can I go to the toilet, then?"
Thank goodness for grammar lessons.
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