For example, this past Friday my sister, Megan, asked me to "...come with me and look at this used bicycle for sale." at a yard sale. I should've known. I thought she wanted my opinion on the bike.
And, to Megan's credit, she still maintains that's the primary purpose of my visit to said yard sale -- to pontificate on the virtues of the $25.00 bicycle. The fact that I had to lend her the $25.00 for the bike has nothing to do with the fact she asked me to go "look" at it with her. Nope. Not at all.
My wife and youngest daughter had me gawking at tree sap the other day. I don't know why, and fortunately, I didn't have to do any physical act other than glare suspicously at the sap. However, this experience leads me to another interesting observation about man/woman behavior.
"Come look at this tree sap." (as if I've never seen tree sap before, okay?).
"Yeah. Wow. Tree sap. Thanks for making me come walk all the way over here to look at this."
"Why do you think it's there?"
How the dickens am I supposed to know? Why, all the sudden, when faced with life's incredible physical mysteries, am I suddenly the font of all-knowledge?
Tonight, my wife asked me why the liquide lemonade container, placed in the door of the refrigerator, froze. "Why did this freeze, Dan?"
"Because it got really, really cold," was my deadpan reply.
"No, I mean why did it freeze and nothing else froze?"
"Because it got colder than anything else in the refrigerator."
"No. You know what I mean. Why did it freeze?"
What? Now I'm some kind of freezing-point-of-lemonade expert? When did I get all these knowledge accolades without my knowing it? I DON'T KNOW! WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME THESE STRANGE QUESTIONS?
Then, if I should opine on something important to the family, I'm no longer an expert in anything. Here's an example: We had a window air conditioner in Charlotte that was too far from the electrical outlet. Knowing that improperly used extension cords with air conditioners are a cause of fire in homes, I went to Home Depot and purchased about 10 feet of 20-amp extension-cord wire. Then, I purchased 15-amp plugs (because the 20-amp plugs are weird looking thingies). I then put this wonderful extension cord together, and my wife forbade me from using it.
After I spoke to an expert (the HVAC guy that worked on our HVAC system) and had him confirm that indeed, my extension cord was safe and appropriate for what we needed, I was allowed to use it.
Hence, anytime I have an opinion on something practical or useful, it's useless. However, I'm an expert on the deeper mysteries of life like why lemonade freezes or why sap oozes from a tree.
You're wondering why I titled this BLOG "Missing Words" by now? Right? Well, since I can only do one BLOG per day and I had three topics to discuss ("come look at this", "useless opinions", and "missing words"), I snuck in the first two topics first.
Now, let's assume for a moment you're driving the car and your 18-year old daughter blurts out, "Let's have the McClaughlin's over for dinner and eat them."
What would you do? I said, "Eat them!??"
She said, "I mean 'eat with them.'" Of course you do dear. I can only imagine you'd find the entire McClaughlin clan as unpalatable as I would.
A single missing word can really change the meaning of a sentence. I can have you over for dinner and eat you or eat with you. You choose.
I pondered this grammatical wonder today for perhaps five whole minutes. I'm thinking, there are certain verbs where you could really spend time thinking about in terms of changing meaning. Here are some I thought of:
I'm going to take my son to the baseball park and hit/jump/play him.
I'm going to take my son to the baseball park and hit/jump/play with him.
drink them
drink with them
sew them
sew with them
paint them
paint with them
bathe them
bathe with them
I'm sure you can think of more. Be careful to include the preposition with as needed.
That's all for today.
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