"It would happen that I've quite fortunately discovered I'm not only vastly brilliant, but I'm hiding behind my delicate beauty to allow you to feel like less of an ignoramus in my presence."Isn't that delightful?
I love language, its nuances, difficulties and stickiness. Much to my beloved's chagrin, I adore finding and pointing out typos and poor language uses in signs and printed media, on television in the weather reports and such. And, it's not because I'm a pain-in-the-ass-know-it-all, though some would choose to differ. I find it comforting that I'm not the only person with her hands on the wrongs keys for a solid five minutes of typing without looking up from the text [insert woman screaming obscenities at the top of her lungs] or dangling this or that grammatical element by its dipthong.
So I'll just admit it: I read the dictionary and encyclopedias when the moods strikes. I am, in fact,one of "those" people. I'll go to look up one thing and end up reading through all of the E's or whatever. It's sad, I know.
Our Mom's most famous saying, after "Go out and play before I kill you all," was "Look it up." She just simply didn't have the time to help each and every one of her seven children with every definition and explanation and still get dinner on the table. As annoying as this was for us at the time, this latter directive came to be an invaluable tool in molding my personality to be an utterly independent researcher. As for the former directive? Let's just say I still know when to make a graceful exit.
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