major mechanical

posted by jennifer

so, i was going through an old pee-chee folder recently... given that it was a pee-chee is,  i am guessing an indicator of it's age... or do they still sell pee-chee's?  well regardless, mine was full of things from the late 80's and early 90's.  mostly stories and articles from my sassy magazines.  there were also a few high school english papers.

one of the papers was an assignment on the crucible.  we were to choose a character  from the crucible, and write an evaluation in the character's own words/voice.  i chose to write in Elizabeth's voice. 

the teacher, mrs. daly, and i had to actually check my yearbook to make sure i was right, that the name matched her face... i remembered her face, and was not positive about her name. i don't have the memory for these kinds of details... in fact, i have only a few stand out memories from high school english.  two of them are:

  a. a teacher talking about symbolism in stories.  he used rain as an example.  he wanted to
       know what rain usually signified in stories... he was going for something ominous, and
       i knew this.  but being me, i made some kind of comment about how much i loved the
       rain, and how it was a good and positive thing... not dark and forbidding.  this was
       probably my dad coming out.  ahem.  anyway, i don't think my teacher was amused.

  and

   b. a kid, who was a jehovah's witness. he was going off on how christmas and easter were
       pagan holidays.  i was clueless to what a pagan even was.  and i, being all raised a
       good catholic girl was all "um no, they are not...... and how dare you" kind of response.
       now, being an older,  freethinking, and well pagan kind of girl, if my current self was
       in the same conversation today, i would be more like "i know!  can you believe the way
       the churches have hijacked these great seasonal celebrations!"

but anyway.  back to my english paper.  the teacher had commented and i quote:  "This is excellent.  You have a really good sense of Elizabeth's voice.  I'd like a copy.  Nicely detailed.
Only one problem (major mechanical)  sentence sense- too many comma splices.  You have to learn how to put in semi-colons and periods."

obviously, i still suffer in the area of major mechanical... and honestly, it isn't something i really even care about.  as long as i am getting my feelings across, in my mind i have been successful.  also, i fear it has become something rebellious.  see,  when i handwrite, i use
capitals, because it is innate, but when i type, i just don't see the need to shift or use proper punctuation for that matter.  but this is the part that worries me.  my old dell laptop is so old that it doesn't have an auto correct program, so it doesn't care how i write.  but some programs insist on trying to change how i write....like blogger.... so, i have to retype some words to convince the computer that i want them lower case... so they can be in my style.  hmmm.  it is frankly getting tiresome. i may have to give up. 

but i really don't like a computer telling me how to do things.  how it should be done. they are trying to cramp my writing style, and that my friends is a major mechanical problem.