Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Thyroidically and grammatically challenged

After the blood-sucking, day-walking vampires took more blood from me again the other day, I get a phone call today telling me I have hypothyroidism and must start medication for it immediately,if not sooner. Apparently the normal to high level is 4.something and mine was a 6.13. Huh. I've always thought the thyroid was one of those excuses women use to defend weight gain, but this DOES cause weight gain. FANTASTIC! Now I know it's not the ice cream, or the chocolate or the pizza three days a week, it's my thyroid! I now see why women use this as an excuse; it's great! It can also cause fatigue and dry skin - check and check. I thought nodding out on the couch every night between 9 and 10pm is normal but I guess not. Especially during 24 - did you SEE that last night?? Wow. And I wouldn't have noticed dryer skin than usual because I take it for granted that I'm a reptile this time of year and that there's not enough body butter in the world that can fix it.

Brian and company started cleaning out the house the evicted people lived in yesterday. I asked if he found any books in the house - no. I said, "These people had NOT ONE book in their house?" No. What the hell - even people who don't read have a couple of books lying around! No. He did find some notes in what looked to be a young teenager's bedroom. Knowing me like he does, he brought the notes home to show me. I was all excited; I used to LOVE writing and reading notes in school! The only thing better is reading other people's notes! Until I started reading these.

As someone who is bothered by bad spelling and grammar, these things kind of made my eyes bleed a little.
A verbatim sample (in other words, spelling and grammar is NOT MINE):

"Hey Ashley,
Whassup wat u doin? Girl im bored than ever. Up in Ms. Hart class you know all they doing is talking this week. Sit by me in the gym in the morning. Thiz junk sloppy but try to read it. What was you doin when you got kicked out of school and who you go with? When the last you talk 2 Kayla is both of yall still kool. I heard bout her & Quincy you know he tell me everything but I'm bout 2 go so if you get bored kall me or text me after 9."

There was many more where that came from and while I was going to share another one, one that was between two different girls, I can't force myself to type like that anymore. In summary, the two girls were talking about a boy ("boi") named Marcus who "think he all that" because he raps. How she "love him like a husband" and forgives him for cheating on her because she cheated on him too.

What the...

We figured out from the evidence provided that this comes from Middle School students and Brian knew which school it was based on where the house was located. It's a decent school, or so he thought. The notes were all dated and they were all written within the last month or two. So is this an accurate representation of how kids communicate these days? Are they receiving passing grades in English, or do they save this kind of writing for only social purposes? Am I so out of touch that this is acceptable now and I'm just holding on to the old fashioned way of writing and use of the English language?

Most importantly, if I ever have a kid, can we afford private school?
Because I DON'T THINK SO.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well heck! I'm sorry you have to go on meds, that condition is nothing to mess with. On the other hand, ice cream is not your nemesis!!! That deserves a "woot", right there. Finally, even when I was in high school my notes were gramatically correct. And intricately folded. Obsessively so. I was a weirdo. You probably knew that.

Anonymous said...

My best friend and I just kept a notebook and wrote in it and passed it to each other. It was like a running 'diary' of our correspondence. I couldn't even tell you how many of those notebooks we filled. We alternated who would keep them. She kept the first one, I kept the second...

We were grammatically correct and our spelling was impeccable. No kiddin'.

I won't even chat with the daughter of a friend of mine until she quits using stupid abbreviations and actually types the words. I can see her rolling her eyes at me on the other side of her computer, I swear. :)

Kim said...

Snerk - No, ice cream is my one true love. But I think that's part of the problem. And no, I'm not surprised about the quality of your notes; mine were the same way. I join you in weirdodom.

Heather - Do you still have any of those notebooks??? I bet they would be so awesome to read now! And I've told my god-daughter (13)if she writes like a dumbass, I'm going to call her out and embarrass her on Myspace. A teenager's worst nightmare.

Anonymous said...

It is all of this text message crap...we are now too lazy to even type full words.

Homeschool!

Kim said...

I do blame the texting and the Myspace and the everything! What the hell!
If I'm in a position where I can not work for awhile, homeschooling is the way we'd like to go. But who knows.