I just want to make one thing clear right now.
I absolutely hate it when people say “ain’t”. I have other verbal pet peeves too, like when people say “irregardless” or “orientated” or start C words with K’s just to be cute (not kute) or pronounce “nuclear” as “nucular”. But “ain’t” is right up there on the top of the list. It is like fingernails down a chalkboard. It actually makes me angry, makes me not like the person saying it. Makes me angry at parents for ever letting their children start saying that word in the first place.
Ain’t.
I shouldn’t be so upset. I mean, it’s entirely hypocritical of me. I swear a lot, which isn’t exactly the classiest thing in the world. And I make up words all of the time. But they follow rules, like Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky. Sure, there’s no such thing as a momrath, but damn it, you knew that it was a noun.
And it is greatly to my horror that somewhere along the way I accidentally married a man who has slowly allowed it to slide back into his speech patterns. I suspect that he squelched his propensity to sound like an inbred dirt farmer in the beginning, but once he locked that gold band around my ring finger, his grammar was nothing more than an old lady baking cookies.
“Why why why why why…?” I question him, sometimes, when I am overwrought with flustered frustration at his lack of caring. He seems to regard it as almost a brand of honor, an outward sign to the world at how down to earth he is. Personally, I think that the fact he drives a pick up truck would be proof enough, thank you very much. Why would anyone specifically choose to sound like that? It’s like going to a fine dinner party wearing a shirt with turkey gravy spilled down the front. Why? Why? See, I still am completely boggled.
My cube farm smells vaguely of beef stew. And yet, there is no beef stew. It’s a mystery. I suspect that my synethesia has reactivated and I am smelling emotions or something. And apparently despair, thy name is Dinty Moore.
I have made a decision about graduate school. Apparently, my whole grad school affair is filled with “should haves”. I should have applied to more colleges. I should have written something fresh and sparkling for my manuscripts rather than using things I wrote before because I am lazy and watched “Bring It On” for the forty-second time instead of writing something new. I should have tried harder. I should have included nude photos of myself. Should should should should should. At this point, I await notice from only the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, a program I actually used to attend. I’m not fond of that program, although it is a very nice program in general, but I didn’t have warm fuzzies about it. Thus, I have decided to put everything off a year. This allows me to apply to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, which accepts fiction students only even numbered years, as well as retry to the programs I already have as well as venture into some other less-prestigious programs and possibly ones further away from Wisconsin. I may take a workshop at UWM this fall. All in all, it’s very good for me to have been rejected. It’s going to make me try harder. I tend to be a very passive aggressive person and in general, things come very easy for me. Whenever I put my mind to something, I make it work and am very good at it, which sounds like I’m bragging, but I’m not. It’s something I’m actually ashamed of because it gives me no excuses. I’m lazy. I’m lazy as all get out and tend to take the path of least resistance. So this is a wake up call for me to get off my hubris and try harder.
And this is the part where I advertise my motivational seminars and inspirational poster line, available for sale in the lobby.
But I did decide that a reasonable substitute for fulfilling my life dream would be a nice shiny Lincoln LS. With a sun roof. And a kick ass stereo. Maybe silver. Yes. A Lincoln LS. In silver. Or maybe jet black.
There’s no ennui in the world that can’t be cleared up with something shiny. That’s all I’m saying. Shiny. Pretty. Gimme. I think I was a a raccoon in another life.
That and if watching “Bring It On” forty times is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
