Mind Your Language!

Yesterday we will not soon forget: That beastly Texan went off in his helicopter and Obama took the presidential oath.

We had our very own neighbourhood ball, which was not attended by the first couple, Mary J. Blige or Beyonce, but it did feature Husband and at least twelve small children doing the chicken dance which was in and of itself a memorable and historic sight.

In honour of the occasion, and as our contribution to dinner, Four and I had decided to make an American flag entirely out of chocolate cupcakes with stars and stripes frosting. This demanded a trip to the grocery store for the requisite ingredients so I bundled the children into the car and we trundled down the road to buy provisions. As we perused the aisles, hunting for food colouring, icing sugar etc. I told Four and One what an important day this was, and why we were celebrating. I was overheard by a young store employee and she stopped me eagerly to ask where I was from.

 I told her I was from England, but the children were born in California.

 “Oh yes, I could tell you were from there by the accent”.

I smiled, somewhat stiffly. I have heard this approximately a billion trillion times before, and if you are a regular reader, so have you. Feel my pain.

Then I waited for her to tell me about the time she had been to London, or her aunt in Hampshire, or that she just loved the Beatles, or whatever other scintillating gem of information she felt compelled to share with me.

Instead she said (oh yes, she did!)

“Are you going to teach the kids to speak your language?”

???!!???!

Several gaping seconds passed while I searched for any words at all – I seemed to have lost the capacity to formulate them – until I finally replied as graciously as I could muster

 “They already speak my language. We speak English in England. It’s where your language comes from.”

“Oh”, she said vaguely, looking slightly, but not nearly embarrassed enough.

“I’m having a hard time waking up this morning”

It was 2.30 in the afternoon.

 

Four is starting Kindergarten at the local public school this September, and will have thirteen years of schooling ahead of her including, one would hope, homework, essays, standardised tests, book reports, science projects, spelling bees et al.
Might she still come out not knowing what language they speak in England? Or France? Might she not know the capital of India? Or be able to do mental arithmetic? (Perhaps I shouldn’t press that last point not being so very strong on it myself). I know that there have been cutbacks in education in the last few years (thank you, Beastly Texan, clearly our kids isn’t learning), but this is a worrying indication of what lies ahead for this country. And if there are great gaps in every child’s knowledge, just what are they doing in those school buildings for all those hours? Watching porn on the school computers? Eating lunch (is that why we have an obesity epidemic)? Picking their noses? Can’t they do that and algebra at the same time? I know I did!

I’m beginning to feel anxious that the children are not going to learn the proper things that they will need to know in school and beyond. Clearly it’s not very realistic to expect me to be able to supplement the missing parts. I do have some very strong convictions about grammar (such as the correct use of adverbs, writing in complete sentences, when to use there, their and they’re etc.), but what on earth am I going to be able to tell them about the Ottoman Empire, calculus and all the other subjects that I missed due to pressing engagements at Roy Rogers Hamburger Emporium where I smoked cigarettes and exchanged critical gossip with a group of kids united by their passion for hardcore punk and bad hair?

Perhaps Husband will step in here. He was very good at school and was extremely happy there. Maybe that is why he is a university professor and I am a failed degenerate. I mean that quite literally – I didn’t even succeed properly at being a degenerate because despite my best efforts at focusing my life on sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, I seem to have morphed into a nicely-spoken married lady who gets called ma’am by the kinds of surly, leather-clad young men I used to go home with after the clubs closed and I bake patriotic cupcakes with preschoolers (baffled, completely baffled by this).

 I am not quite ready to take on the entire school system, particularly as Four is not even enrolled yet, so I have decided to start with helping to improve the things I can around me, beginning with the grocery store. I went down there again today with Four and One in tow and spoke to the manager about changing the signs over the express checkout that read ‘10 items or less’. It drives me BANANAS that they don’t say ’10items or fewer’ For those of you so accustomed to this mistake that you have forgotten why it’s wrong, you can only have less of one amount, such as “Less mashed potato, please”, but you do have fewer of a number of items, such as “Fewer carrots, please”.  Ergo you cannot have “Less potatoes, please” or “10 items or less”. It just isn’t right.

The manager was extremely polite in his American-customer-service-oriented way but clearly thought I was a nut job.  The more stringently I explained my position, the less he cared. I did consider bringing up the fact that  English was not a strong suit for this store given my earlier experience but I didn’t want to incriminate that poor, feckless girl. Besides, One was looking decidedly shifty. It later emerged he was quietly eating M&M’s he had filched from a low shelf, undetected by me. Four had spotted the misdemeanor but took a bribe to stay silent.

Unfortunately, this little act of thievery rather undermined the high ground of my grammatical principles, and after paying for the candy and telling both of them off we left rather quickly.

Four turned to me and said

“Do you think he will change the sign?”

I said I didn’t know, but it didn’t sound like he was very interested in doing so.

“But it’s your language, Mom” she said.

“If he doesn’t do what you say,  just take it back!”

Just take it back! An interesting thought. If the language really belonged to me and I could just remove it at will, what would people do?  Would they switch to another language if they could? Sign or signal? Scream and cry? 
Or would they just be quiet?

Then the really interesting question becomes:

Who would I silence?