I’m Sorry Mrs. Gibson

Mrs. Gibson, I hope you’re still gracing this world with your wisdom. Because I owe you an apology.

I’m sorry for breaking the rules you tried so hard to teach me.

Yep. That little, goody-two-shoes in your sixth-grade class is now a grammar delinquent.

I know. It’s hard to understand how it could happen. You worked so diligently to drill all of those grammar rules into our impressionable young minds — and I want you to know it worked. I’ve caught myself using many of your famous quips on my own kids — especially “I didn’t know Andrew was mean,” whenever his sister said “Me an’ Andrew….”

I tried to impress upon them to never end a sentence with a preposition. “Where are you at?” still makes my skin crawl. And when I hear someone say “Him and me are…” I cringe. Ugh.

But as much as I appreciate good grammar, there are some rules I can’t always abide by. (See what I mean? “By which I can’t always abide?” No thank you.)

And then there’s the whole complete sentences thing. I’m sorry, but I break that rule a lot.

The thing is, when you write, you have to write like people talk. You want to connect with readers, engage them, and create an emotional response. That can be hard when you’re all wrapped up in making sure every sentence has a subject, a verb, and an object. So, I don’t always worry about that. I use fragments freely. Sometimes even one-word fragments. Really. And I also start sentences with “and” and “because.”

Because I’ve come to believe you have to know the rules but also know when it’s okay to break them.

As I write this, I wonder if I could go back to my 12-year-old self, raise my hand, and declare, “But I’ve heard they’re tools, not rules.”

Probably not. Because while you taught me much, you scared me more!