Paige Turner was a reader. She liked to read. No, she loved to read. She read whatever and whenever she could. She read books, magazines, junk mail, recipes, cereal boxes, and if she was driving, billboards and bumper stickers. She always had something to read on her nightstand and here dining room table. She had a mini-library in her bathroom and another outside on her deck.
Paige was a wordaholic.
All of her reading eventually turned Paige into a grammarian. She knew all of the rules of the English language. If someone broke a rule in her presence, she caught it and corrected it in her head.
One cool and blustery afternoon, Paige received a magical and surprising transformation. She was reading the latest revision of the New American Heritage Dictionary and Thesaurus (she often read reference books) on her Kindle Reader. The reader’s battery was low and she had it plugged in while reading. A freak electrical storm passed through her neighborhood. An enormous, high-energy bolt of lightning hit the local power substation. The abrupt surge affected the power grid for miles around, including Paige’s house. Instantly, the Kindle Reader vaporized in her hands, she flew off her chair and landed ten feet away, and all lights extinguished. When she regained consciousness thirty minutes later, she felt a radiating aura in her soul. She was dizzy, yet enlightened, light-headed, yet grounded.
Her dizziness was interrupted when the lights instantly turned back on. Not sure what had happened, Paige moved over to the television set and switched it on. The local news aired information about the bizarre storm that passed through and showed video footage of downed power lines and darkened streets. The TV anchorman described the chaos.
“There is mass destruction in the city from the powerful electric storm that hit today. There are no areas that didn’t get hit.”
Paige yelled at the TV. “That’s a double-negative. What is wrong with you, you moron?”
Paige immediately called the TV station so she could personally correct the newscaster. While waiting for the call to go through, her phone rang. She recognized her sister’s number. She hung up on the TV station and answered the incoming call.
”Hi Jean.” Paige said, as she answered the call. “If you’re calling to see if I’m okay, I am.”
Jean replied. “Thank goodness. I’m glad to hear you’re doing good.”
“I’m doing well. Don’t you know the difference between an adjective and an adverb?”
“Settle down.” Jean urged. “I don’t mean to cause no troubles.”
Paige yelled into her phone. “Another double-negative. I’m surrounded by fools.”
“And goodbye to you, too.” With that, Jean hung up.
Paige left her house to survey the damage to her neighborhood. As soon as she walked out the door, her next-door neighbor Agnes arrived.
“What a mess out here.” Agnes said. “While getting onto a bus, the lightning struck and my purse fell into the street.”
Paige was quick to respond to Agnes. “Do you know that you just used a dangling modifier? Are you illiterate?”
Agnes shot back. “Not at all. I know who my father is and where he lives at.”
“And now you’re ending a sentence with a proposition. Learn to speak well before talking to me again.”
Paige walked off. She began to wonder what had happened to her. Did she now have some type of super powers that gave here extraordinary vocabulary? Was her noticing of grammatical errors faster than a speeding bullet? Could she leap over misplaced modifiers in a single bound? Were her linguistic abilities more powerful than a locomotive? Did the freak storm turn her into GRAMMAR WOMAN?
Paige was confused, but at the same time amused. Every person she met on the street said something that broke at least one rule of proper grammar, and Paige was like Johnny on the Spot, correcting all. She made quick enemies as she strode through town hurling insults to all as she rebuked their feeble attempts at proper English.
“What’s gotten into me?” she wondered. “I need to get a hold of myself before I say the wrong thing to the wrong person.”
She continued walking down the street, looking down and trying her best to ignore the voices around her. She passed a group of office workers on the street, and was sure she heard someone use the word “that” instead of “who”. She started to say something, but kept quiet and walked away. She heard a police officer direct to pedestrians by saying “You’s guys”. She bit her lip and continued walking. She heard sentence fragments, redundant phrases, and incorrect pronouns. She covered her ears with her hands, screamed at the top of her lungs, and ran toward her home.
Paige was two block from her house when she ran into her neighbor, Biff. She saw him coming her way, and tried her hardest to avoid him. Biff was not her favorite person. He was loud, opinionated, and not overly bright. Before she could escape, he stopped her on the street.
“Did y’all hear about that big storm? he asked. “Them there lightnin’ bolts was flying every which way, and there weren’t no way they weren’t gonna strike. It was freekin’ awesome, if you be asking me. Anyways, I was watchin’ Fox News and they was telling how some people are saying it’s cause of global warming, but it ain’t that warm out today and the lightning bolts just kept . . . “
Paige’s head exploded. She started yelling at Biff. “I can’t take it any longer. Them there doesn’t compute. Double-negatives. Going – not gonna. Ain’t isn’t a word.”
She would have continued dissecting Biff’s grammar, but just like that, another lightning bolt appeared out of the sky and struck a nearby tree. A branch cracked off and fell on Paige. The last thing she remembered was screaming as the branch struck her head.
Paige woke up the next morning in a hospital bed. She was dizzy and bruised, but for the most part, okay. A young doctor and nurse stood by her bedside.
“What happened? How did I get here?” she asked.
The doctor filled her in while reading her chart. “You have a slight concussion from the blow you took to the head. It could have been a lot worse, if it weren’t for your friend over there catching you when you fell.”
Paige wanted to correct the doctor’s use of the word “weren’t”. Instead, she looked over to her right and say Biff sitting in a chair. Before she could say anything, Biff started talking.
“You was yelling at me, but it didn’t much matter. Anyways, you got hit good by a tree and got knocked out cold. I caught you and brought you here. Hope you’re not still mad at me.”
She had no thoughts of correcting him. “I was wrong when we talked yesterday. I apologize. I hope you can forgive me.”
“Shucks. It ain’t nothing.”
The doctor and nurse left the room after telling Paige she’d need to say another day for observation. Biff said he’d stay and keep her company of she wanted.
“I’d like that.” Paige replied.
She grabbed the TV remote and pressed the power button. “Would you like to watch the news? I think we can get CNN.”
“Sure. If it helps you feel good.”
Paige smiled and thought to herself. “Well . . . it would make me feel well.”
