That what I says
A woman who could be Lily Tomlin’s twin, if Lily were shorter and more shriveled, sits at the front of the bus. She’s wearing a tan suede jacket with fur lined trim and two knotted-rope ankle bracelets under white tights. Glancing across the aisle, she recognizes a friend. The friend is stout, her face buried in a book.
“Hey, Abby!” she says. Abby looks up. “What’s the past tense of ‘sneak?’”
Abby thinks for a minute, adjusts the sleeve of her hot pink jacket. “Snuck,” she declares.
A triumphant grin spreads across Lily’s face. “Nuh-uh!” she crows. “It’s ‘sneaked!’”
“No one ever says ‘sneaked,’” Abby grumbles, turning back to her book.
“I sneak, I sneaked, I have sneaked,” Lily intones. Abby looks up, a thoughtful expression on her face.
“You know, when I was growing up, I was always taught to use the word ‘a’ before a word that started with a consonant, and the word ‘an’ before a word that began with a vowel,” she says. “Now, people are using them any which way they want.”
“Someone in my department asked me to relate information to another person today,” Lily replies, her face very serious. “And I says, ‘You mean relay information? You can’t relate information to a person. You have to relay it, I says.’”
:: May.01.2008 :: Daily, Pittsburgh, Random :: 2 Comments »
I was just talking with my mom last night about how much it bugs me when people say “I seen”. It’s right up there on my list of pet peeves with incorrect usage of “ignorant” and “literally”.
I hate “I seen” too, Amy. And when someone says “irregardless,” I visibly shudder.