Out of Spec

Will The Real Albert Einstein Please Stand Up

I know I’m not the smartest person in the world. I’m not even in the top ten per cent. Heck, I’ll go so far as to say that I may not even been in the top quarter. However, there’s a trend in our society that people are getting stupider by the day. How many of you noticed I said stupider? That’s not a real word. But it’s an example of how people talk in our society, and intelligence is worsening in more areas than just grammar.

My friend Laura and I spent high school doing what most high school girls do: talking on the phone about boys. We talked about a large variety of boys over the years, and we were best friends for a really long time. One specific boy comes to mind as I write this article, but I’ll save his name to protect the innocent. Laura liked him a lot, so we spent a great deal of time amassing as much information as possible about him. On one occasion, Laura was walking through the hallway during class (as she frequently did) and heard the newspaper advisor calling to him, “There’s no ‘e’ in argument.” This is a minor mistake, sure, and a commonly misspelled word. There’s an “e” at the end of argue, why shouldn’t there be an “e” in argument? Another occasion, however, would make any grammarian shudder. It had been raining outside, and Laura was sitting in a classroom talking to a teacher. The same aforementioned guy walked in to the class room and said, “This floor is slippy. I almost fell down.” Not only did he say the word slippy, which consequently is not a real word (unless you live in central PA), he also ended his sentence in a preposition. Is it so hard to say “The floor is slippery. I almost fell.”?

You may be asking me, Stephanie, why did you choose this particular day to reminisce about the past? That is a very good question, one that I’m more than happy to answer. I awoke from slumber this morning with my alarm, rose from my bed, and went to the rest rooms down the hall from my room. Written on a sheet of notebook paper (no joke) was the following sentence: “The tolits will not flush!” It was written with ink, and then traced over with yellow highlighter. The girl, whoever she may be, did not even stop to think. And she wrote it twice. I shudder to think how the sentence would have read if more than one word contained multiple vowels. I can understand misspelling the word argument. If you can’t spell the word “toilet” without Microsoft Word spell check, how on earth did you get into college?

I am amazed and appalled sometimes by people’s lack of grasp of the English language. I am no expert, to be certain, and I am sure that my entries would be a lot worse off if I didn’t proofread them first, but some things people should just know. My biggest pet peeve of all time is verb/predicate agreement. How are you doing, you may ask someone. I’m doing good. The very phrase brings pain to my ears. You cannot say that! I am good, I am doing well. It is bad enough to hear in the hallways of Seton Hill, but this summer, I heard it on a Lowe’s commercial. That’s a national advertisement. They said “doing good” on national TV for everyone to hear. I wanted to claw my ears out.

My opinions on grammar may be a little extreme, but I know I’m not alone. Our society is slowly getting stupider, and the closest thing we’re getting to improvements is the No Child Left Behind Act. It’s to the point where the average teenager would rather smoke a joint than read a book, and that thought terrifies me. Parents, teach your children from a young age how wonderful reading is. I believe that this is where intelligence starts—the home. Read to your kids early and often, and they won’t misspell the word toilet.