I’m walking down a sidewalk in Omaha, Nebraska.
A guy passes me with a tee shirt that says, “Shut Up Liver Your Fine!” in big letters.
The fine print suggests it came from a bar in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
That’s awesome! is my first reaction.
I can picture myself parked on a stool in some crappy Mexican bar.
I’m knocking back bottom-shelf Mexican tequila, having exactly that conversation with my own liver.
I mean, who hasn’t had that conversation at some point in his drinking career?
Whoever came up with this tee shirt is pretty genius, for sure.
But also grammatically inept.
My brain seizes on the wonderful humor and creativity captured in this tee shirt – for about two seconds.
And then immediately goes to work to correct the grammatical errors.
Let’s see . . . the first and most egregious mistake is the use of the word your.
What’s required here is the contraction for you are, or you’re, not the second-person possessive pronoun.
That’s a huge pet peeve of mine.
Okay. What else?
This is a declarative statement addressed to an animate object, the personified liver.
As such, liver should be offset by commas, as in, “Shut up, liver, you’re fine!”
But we aren’t finished.
As written, this is either a run-on sentence or a compound sentence lacking a coordinating conjunction.
“Shut up,” with an implied you as the subject, and “You’re fine,” could stand alone as distinct sentences.
And perhaps they should.
In my estimation, it would add greater emphasis to the message if written as two, separate sentences.
“Shut up, liver. You’re fine!”
See? I like that.
And what about the exclamation point?
I agree that at least one is appropriate. But what about two?
I certainly don’t subscribe to the over-use of exclamation points, or any form of punctuation. But would it be useful here?
“Shut up, liver! You’re fine!”
I could imagine myself getting pretty animated in such a conversation with my liver.
So, yes, I think I’d go for the second exclamation point.
Feel free to disagree.
So, there you have it.
I should be on a plane to Cabo to share the grammatically correct version of the expression with the bar owner, so he can make the necessary adjustments in his next run of tee shirts.
Am I right? Who’s with me?
Of course, this raises an important question.
What the f—k is the matter with me?
Why do I do this?
I can’t even help it.
My brain just does it. Instinctively. Automatically.
For what purpose? To what end?
A few days later, I’m boarding a flight to Atlanta.
There’s a young family behind me. Dad, mom, and two little kids.
As we walk down the jetway, I pick up on their conversation.
The mom is in teacher mode, explaining some newly discovered phenomenon to the kids.
“That’s right,” she says. “If you work for the airlines, you get to fly for free.”
“Oooohhhh,” the kids say.
Kids love freebies. Especially when it comes to domestic air travel, apparently.
“Yeah,” the mom continues, “it’s a French benefit.”
Wait. What did she just say?
I know she meant fringe benefit. But it sounded like she said French.
I’m sure I misheard her.
“Especially for pilots,” mom says. “They get all kinds of French benefits. Like sitting in first class.”
I hadn’t misheard her.
She’d meant to say French.
Wow.
What’s my move here? I’m thinking.
Report the mother to child protective services?
Because the kids’ brains are highly malleable.
If they’re taught to believe there’s such a thing as French benefits, what long-term impact might that have on their cognitive development?
To me, it’s tantamount to giving them a pack of Marlboro Reds and saying, “Light up, kids!”
What kind of life will these kids have?
How will they turn out?
Likely, they’ll end up like the porn shop owner just west of Columbia, Missouri.
About twenty miles west of town, you start seeing signs for Passion’s Adult Superstore.
That’s right: Passion’s.
You already see the problem, don’t you?
Why use the possessive form?
Is Passion a person?
Did Joe-The-Investment-Banker quit Wall Street to set up shop in rural Missouri under the alias Joe Passion?
If so, Passion’s, the possessive, makes sense.
But I’m afraid that’s not the case.
Having driven this stretch of I-70 numerous times and studied Passion’s half-dozen billboards, I’ve come to a different conclusion.
Passion’s, with the apostrophe-s, is intended to be plural.
Plural!
Which is a crime against humanity.
Since when did it become acceptable to move from singular to plural via an apostrophe-s?
All you need is the s, dammit!
Isn’t that what we were all taught in kindergarten?
But this apostrophe-s thing is everywhere.
I saw it written in a news article not too long ago.
“There are too many car’s on the road,” the resident reported.
I mean . . .
I mean . . .
I don’t know what I mean.
Maybe it’s just me.
And, in fairness, I’ve gotten my grammar and word usage wrong from time to time.
I’ve been known to use words just because I like the sound of them, not because I fully understand their meaning.
I did that once in a final exam I’d written for my Western Civilization class at the Naval Academy.
And was rightly crucified by the professor as a result.
And, certainly, if my eighth-grade English teacher were to grade this essay, or any other I’ve written in the past ten years, she’d likely give it a C-plus at best.
That’s because I’m fond of sentence fragments and the occasional F-bomb.
But I use such things knowingly and by design.
I know I’m breaking the rules.
Is the same true of the bar owner in Cabo? The mother boarding the flight in Atlanta? The proprietor of Passion’s?
I don’t know.
And it probably doesn’t matter.
I suppose we have more important things to worry about in this world.
Even if our nation’s weakening grasp of its own language causes me tremendous mental anguish.
I should just Shut Up.
So, hey . . .
If Your Fine,
Then I guess I should be fine, too.
(Even though I’m not fine.
Not fine at all.)