As Your President…
The day after tomorrow, I’ll have to make a choice that I haven’t been faced with for years: Which primary should I vote in? The last time my vote in either primary had a glimmer of a chance of making...
View ArticleScooby-Doo Counterfactual
“And I would have gotten away with it, if it hadn’t been for these meddling kids!” You can hear this line, or variants of it (“…and their dumb dog!”) during the denouement of many episodes of...
View ArticleThey Swim As Good As They Look
While I was out and about today, I saw a girl wearing a T-shirt promoting her high school swim team. On the front, it said: If only we swam as good as we look! That’s an interesting problem. You can...
View ArticleIs If I Would Have Ever Standard Grammar?
In 1986, I couldn’t escape the song “If She Would Have Been Faithful” by Chicago. I hated it for three reasons. First, it was such a whiny, wimpy-sounding song. Of course, a lot of Chicago’s songs are...
View ArticleTalks at Appropriate Times
Doug’s report card came home last week, and on the list of nonacademic, behavioral characteristics, he had a minus for “Talks at appropriate time.” I knew from the conference with his teacher last...
View ArticleIf I Had Known
Back when Doug was in preschool, we took him to the doctor one day for a rash on his face and chest. The diagnosis: fifth disease. Fifth disease? What the hell was that? After Googling it, I learned...
View ArticleConditional Imperfection
“Rocco was doing it again today,” Adam told Doug at supper one night. His classmate Rocco has a habit of making contrarian claims, seemingly just for the purpose of arguing about them. “He was saying...
View ArticleSara Squint
In an issue of Entertainment Weekly a few weeks ago, I read an article about Sara Bareilles, a name I recognized from a music video that used to play on the overhead TVs at the gym, back when I used to...
View ArticleOpen Conditionals with the Past Perfect
When Glen and I were kids, for a couple of years our family would read aloud from novels after supper. I remember we did a few that you’ve probably never heard of, plus a Hardy Boys mystery and Johnny...
View ArticleBackshifted Conditionals
A few posts back I wrote about some unusual conditional sentences that didn’t fit neatly into a neat 2×2 grid of open-vs-remote, nonpast-vs-past conditional sentences. Now, after teaching my ESL...
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