Recognize!

 

I'm not sure when I noticed how brevity, even a terseness, had virtually replaced complete sentences.  May as well blame it on widespread computer usage as anything else.  Can anyone remember when the computer became "de rigueur" in the homes of all but those imprisoned by poverty or broadband-lessness? Not to worry, just rhetorical musings.  

Back in the day, I remember when most English teachers were female (and often spinsters),  learning that a sentence contained a subject (noun or pronoun), predicate (verb), and object (direct or indirect). was standard.  Actually, I wonder why gender and marital status mattered.  They probably didn't; yet, they rest in the area of my brain where minutia lurks.

Back to brevity. In first grade, I mastered reading "Run, Spot, run"  and "See Spot Run," along with other three-word sentences.  Quite the accomplishment, according to my teacher's assessment.  Later in high school,  English teachers introduced simple, complex, compound, and compound-complex sentences, along with exercises to reinforce reading comprehension.  The sentence, however, served as organic "soil" in which discourse grew.  Be sure always to remember the proper parts of speech, as well as their functions (noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection), my teachers insisted.

Learning how to embroider the pieces into a coherent tapestry challenged any student who wanted to earn a decent grade in English class.  Are your eyelids drooping yet or more likely, have you nodded off from boredom or confusion?  Early in my educational sojourn, the study of English entranced me. In truth, acquiring knowledge challenged and motivated.  As soon as I could, I headed straight for the  Readers Digest shelf in the Library searching for the month's invigorating "Word Power" section.  They held me in thrall as surely as the Sirens enticed Odysseus on his voyage back to Ithaca.  Probably, I was more "Nerdy" than anything else.   

"The way people speak reveals so much about them," my slightly older sister, Marie, would patiently explain.  Like a scratched lp, she seemed steeped in pronouncements, pulling rank and sounding like one of those spinster English teachers! Not really.  However, she must have thought being a college coed underscored superior knowledge and experience.  You might assume I speak like an equally opinionated baby sister.  And you'd be right!   Behaving and speaking properly, "Miss Manners" pontificated,  came courtesy of her astrological sign.  Hmm.  All I know is she's still doing it a hundred years later! 

Seriously, our history of being stigmatized as a race of inferior people, enforced in class, caste, and color, causes myriad reactions, none of them designed to empower.  We paid a huge price for the country's systemically unequal and finally illegal treatment of Black people.  Marie knew this intuitively.  Thankfully, I think, I lived in a bubble designed to protect my fragility and innocence.  In the meantime, Marie always had the energy and tenacity to help me navigate the hidden dangers of racism and sexism.

In retrospect, Marie must have overheard our parents and others decrying the abhorrent treatment  Black people received; she learned early to handle it.  Me? I was in a bubble somewhere reading, not history that might have protected me, but English historical novels, murder mysteries, and thrillers. Along with comic books and puzzles. Never did like sci-fi or fantasy, though.  Yet, that's when I discovered the Harlem Renaissance and luxuriated in talented Black writers,  poets, artists, and dancers (yes, dancers. Think Alvin Ailey snd Judith Jamison). 

You go figure the contradictions and juxtapositions, 'cause I can't! Wait. I know what I'll do.  I'll call Marie!