Critique an essay I wrote for English last January

[Guest The Czech Republic]

Did Somebody Say "Absolute Living Hell?"

 

Fast food: it’s a staple of the American cuisine. And much like a staple, it’s not all that pleasant to have inside of you. However, that unpleasant sick feeling you get from a Quarter-Pounder that could’ve used an extra minute or two under the heat lamp can be offset by the convenience and speed that you get when ordering from one of these places. For me, however, what kept me coming wasn’t the convenience, nor was it the speed. It definitely wasn’t the potential food poisoning. It was the fact that with some of the people that were staffing these fine establishments, you just knew that you were in for an experience. What you thought would be a quick burger and soda could become an event!

 

To fully understand these stories, one must know that prior to living here, my family and I took up residence in Arlington Heights, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago. (…Excellent.) Now, if you’ve been to any fast food establishment around here, you are usually guaranteed great service with a smile, and the worst that happens is they forget to give you the barbecue sauce for your chicken tenders, and you have to eat them without it. Everything is, for the most part, just pretty mundane and inconspicuous, not unlike the state of Wisconsin.

 

Such is not the case back in the suburbs.

 

McDonald’s, Burger King, and their ilk should’ve just painted red and white stripes on the roof: those places were circuses. The restaurants were filled with pushy and cranky customers, and the drive-thru lanes were chaotic. Besides the sense of sickness from the smell of old grease, there was always a sense of confusion and frustration there, which was a result of the fact that these places were run by immigrants that barely grasped English, and some normal high school students that, to be honest with you, weren’t all that far ahead in terms of lingual mastery. The communication gap was so wide that not even the Fonz could jump it.

 

So why are the suburban Chicago fast-food restaurants such webs of hot, fresh, and ready-to-order insanity? The case is this: it’s the big cities and their outlying regions that truly are the land of opportunity for many non-Americans. People emigrate from distant, exotic, impoverished lands such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mexico, Iran, and certain parts of Alabama, all in search of a better life for themselves and their extended families, which they attain by taking one of the many, many jobs that are to be found in a metropolitan area. However, in the process of this noble cause, these immigrants tend to struggle with adapting into their new positions, in that nobody understands anybody. It’s bad enough that the person taking your order can’t understand what you’d like; but now the cashier and the cook are speaking mutually unintelligible dialects of Punjabi. However, in the end, you get your meal in some form or another, and they get paid. It’s a symbiotic relationship: they get a comparatively decent income and a better life than they could have imagined, and I get more witty anecdotes than you can shake a stick at, or stick a shake at, as one will soon read. As you see, under this system of “improve standard of living while amusing local citizens with cultural idiosyncrasies,” everybody’s a winner! Sociologists call this “the Latka Gravas Principle.”

 

As you’ll see, I’ve had my share of bad experiences with foreigners working at restaurants. (Note that I’m not referring to the rock band Foreigner, though let me tell you, once you get “Jukebox Hero” stuck in your head, that sucker is not coming out.)

 

My first acquaintance with how the local fast food industry operated came some time around 1991, when I was still a very young child. My mother was shopping at Hawthorne Mall in nearby Vernon Hills, and had brought me along. Midday, we headed to the McDonald’s in the food court for lunch. Looking back, it can be truthfully stated that the world would be a better place without food courts. There have been, in addition to the obligatory sticky floors, lousy atmosphere, and bad food, instances of walls collapsing on innocent by-eaters, and entire soda fountains collapsing and rupturing on the ground. Call it the Exxon Valdez of the shopping-center realm.

 

This experience is also notable in that it was my first time being a Big Kid and ordering my meal at the counter. To this day I still have some sense, albeit faint, of anxiety when ordering food. I guess the first impression is always the lasting one, and this first impression involved a menacing man with an ever-sporty McDonald’s polo shirt-and-turban ensemble. To make matters worse, I had a lisp, and he sounded like a singsong-y Soup Nazi. The dialogue between us goes as follows:

 

“Yeth, I’d like a plain hamburger and a thrawberry milkthake.”

“NO RAWBRAY SHAY!”

“Then can I have a vanilla milkthake?”

“NO VANIL SHAY!”

“Why can’t I have a thake?”

“SHAY MACHINE BROKE NO WORK!”

“Um…I geth I’ll have a Thprite.”

“NO SPRY!”

“Then what ith there?”

 

So was right about then that The Model Employee tells me what they did have, in the form of a mystery wrapped in an enigma covered in special sauce:

 

“DIE COE, OH EYES SEE.”

 

Yes, folks, there you have it. Die Coe, and eyes see. I quickly deduced (if a four-year-old can deduce) that one of the drinks was Diet Coke. But the real question was…what did he mean by “eyes see”? Was it iced tea? Or was it Hi-C? Or was he giving me some deep religious thoughts about how the eyes of God see all our foibles and sins? Unable to distinguish if he was talking about orange drink, tea, or philosophy, I cried like a little baby and ran out of the food court with tears streaming down my face, flailing my arms like an epileptic bird. My mom had to chase after her young son, now traumatized for life, and find out what the problem was.

 

However, things don’t end there. Back in the food court, plenty of patrons were receiving sage advice about how the eyes see. It was the hot topic! “Did he say Hi-C?” “No, it was iced tea, for sure!” “You never can be sure, Jane,” “Well I’ll just have a Coke.” “Maybe he said IBC!” “They don’t have that here, you idiot!” Nobody knew what the other drink was, and nobody wanted to order it, in fear that they would get the wrong drink. It could be Hi-C, it could be iced tea, and hey, it could have been a wildcard like root beer. At this juncture, there’s nothing you can’t rule out. Soon, there was a flock of hungry angry suburbanites all crowding around the McDonald’s window, and they wanted answers! Not to mention their lunch, which at this point had been delayed a good ten minutes. So the manager came out and mumbled something in some English that was as broken as a windowpane dropped from a helicopter; accomplishing about as much as Hillary Clinton did in her brief stint as a “White House enabler.” Probably more.

 

Honestly, everything had become so surreal at this point that getting hit in the head by a golf ball, waking up next to my wife, and realizing that I was just a psychologist in Chicago seemed like a viable possibility at the time. Unfortunately, much like most of the events in my life, this particular story has no dramatic climax. Eventually, everyone got tired of expanding their lingual horizons, and dispersed themselves across the food court to places such as A&W, Sbarro, or Panda Express, which, contrary to popular opinion, does not serve roasted panda in a quick fashion.

 

If you thought that my run-ins with madness at McDonald’s were limited to a single instance, why, you’re even further from the truth than their “shakes” are from being legitimate dairy products. About a year later, I encountered what seemed to be a great limited-time offer. It was autumn, which is, especially in the Midwest, football season. Complete with Chicago Bears promotional material, McDonald’s was selling chili dogs as a perfect meal to eat while watching the big game. This apparent intimate connection between chili dogs and the NFL that transcends any other high-fat food still evades me to this day. However, I was too young at the time to comment or care about unimportant frivolous details (and now that I can, oh, do I ever) such as this, so I decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a chili dog.

 

My dad, who was with me, was also enticed by this deal. However, he elected to bypass the hot dog and just order a bowl of chili. Surely, if they had chili for the chili dogs, they could serve him chili. This is when I learned that toughest lesson of all as a child: your parents are not always right.

 

However, the bastion of wisdom that pointed out this fact to me was a teenage boy of some Middle Eastern descent. My father and I approached the counter for our Sunday afternoon lunch, and I witnessed the following exchange, which is just as confounding as the previous one. Bear in mind that I was still in no hurry to talk to this cashier…I had learned quite enough about how the eyes see once already, I didn’t want to risk a follow-up lecture.

 

“Hi, we’ll have one chili dog, and one bowl of chili, if that’s possible.”

“No sir not possible.”

“Why not? Don’t you have chili here?”

“Yes sir no sir.”

“…wait, What?”

“I cannot sell you chili sir.”

“But if you have chili for the chili dogs, isn’t it possible to just sell the chili?”

“No sir it is not. Our chili is not meant for eating.”

 

How reassuring! If there’s one thing that I do not want to hear from a person working at a restaurant, ever, I’d say hearing that their food is not intended for human consumption is about…third. (I guess “I’ve put a man in the meat locker once before,” and “hide those Fancy Feast cans, the inspector’s coming” come in at first and second.) My dad was almost in tears laughing. Or choking. I couldn’t tell. But still, “our chili is not meant for eating,” even though you could argue that he meant something else, turned me off of McDonald’s for quite a while. So I suggested to my family that we try a new fast-food restaurant, somewhere that I thought might be better, a place where maybe, just maybe, the food they were selling might be meant for eating.

 

As it turned out, this place had food that should not have been meant for eating. The restaurant I suggested my family try was Long John Silver’s, tucked behind a carpet store and an auto-supply warehouse. I soon found out it was hidden for a reason. Perhaps you’re familiar with Long John Silver’s: it showed the world why fast food and seafood were never meant to co-exist. Because of its poor quality (unbeknownst to me at the time) and its awful location, they employed the very bottom rung of the labor ladder. Below McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Arby’s, you name it. It was awful, or should I say ARRRRRful. (A little pirate humor.) At least I could count on McDonald’s staff to give me something to think about, like the eyes and what they see. Long John Silver’s just gave me a headache and a stomachache.

 

The first thing I noticed about the place was the high fat content of everything, and not just what was on the menu. I have a sneaking suspicion that somebody got trigger-happy and deep-fried the walls. The next step would’ve been to cut costs by replacing the fluorescent lighting with just slathering lots of grease on the roof to the point where the ceiling became translucent. With the low level of business they had, I like to think to myself that I prevented such a thing.

 

This event was on the other end of the Goofy Fast-Food Experience spectrum, and for that reason it must be shared to fully understand life in the suburbs when it comes to getting food. Unintelligible ranting about soft drinks causing a ruckus in a food court or malapropisms about what can and can’t be sold are stories that are so bad that you just have to laugh at the craziness of it all. On the other hand, there is this event. It’s the difference between accidentally super-gluing your hand to a toilet and getting your arm cut off.

 

My parents and I approached the counter, which was, believe it or not, covered in grease. The person working at the counter, I distinctly remember, was named Cyrzny. Now look over that name and realize that it is composed entirely of consonants. And don’t give me that “and sometimes Y” malarkey, because “Cyrzny” is not meant for pronouncing. I figure he snuck in to the country illegally and created an alias by copying down the tiles on a Scrabble rack. I saw on the menu, which seemed a tad too shiny, that they sold gift certificates for the restaurant. I felt that an appropriate gift to them would be to donate some vowels from my name to poor Cyrzny. So what, I'd get my name mispronounced, but it's not as if anyone can get it right anyway.

 

My parents ordered the “captain’s sampler,” which consisted entirely of deep-fried cod, and hush puppies, which were deep-fried bread. There was probably a cow’s worth of butter per square inch in that meal. Cyrzny, likely due to the floors being mopped with lard, lost his footing on his way back from the kitchen, and spilled the sack of sickeningly saturated seafood across the greasy counter. But luckily, all that fat came to the rescue, as the contents slid right across the counter and into the recovering Cyrzny’s hands with the speed and grace of a hockey puck sailing into an empty net. Regrettably, there was not a siren going off and “Rock and Roll Part II” playing over the speakers when he caught it, but our food, gross as it was, was safe. When my dad requested some tartar sauce packets, Cyrzny picked up a handful of oily packets, and held them in his cupped hands, making a sad puppy-dog face. He didn’t hand them to anybody, perhaps in fear that he would drop them. My dad had his hands full with the bags of food, which were gradually progressing from paper-white to crystal-clear.

 

“Could you just put those in the bag for me, please?” my father asked. Cyrzny stood there with the packets, doing nothing. “The bag! Put them in the bag! No! The bag!” my dad insisted. But Cyrzny just held them there. “PUT THEM IN THE BAG! THE BAG! PUT THE SAUCE INTO THE BAG!” he repeated. It was an awful, hideous experience. And we hadn’t even eaten the food yet.

 

That is a story that must be made funny with commentary and wordplay only, for the actual experience itself is both sad and pitiful for all parties involved. The food, as you would expect, was terrible. I still feel bad for the poor boy with the odd name, (you’d call him that too if you kept having to go through the thought process of getting that name right) because he didn’t know any better. And just from having to be in there for five minutes, I probably inhaled all sorts of airborne butter particles.

I’ve spent eight-and-a-half, yes, eight and one half, double-spaced pages whining, ranting, and raving about how horrible it’s been going to fast-food restaurants where the employees don’t understand English, and yet I still frequent those same places when I’m near one. Why do I continue this tradition? Much like this essay, it’s all so delightfully nonsensical. And as one can see by reading this admittedly long-winded piece, I like to perpetuate things far, far beyond where they should end.

 

If there’s one thing you learn from reading this, it shouldn’t be that we must strive to celebrate America’s diversity. Nor should it be that you can find humor in the strangest of places. What you should learn is that if somebody upsets you, and you want revenge by making that person go absolutely insane, take him or her to a fast food restaurant in suburban Chicago. Oh, and on that long car ride, figure out a way to play the first two seconds of “Baba O’Riley” on a constant loop. You’ll completely destroy their brain.

 

Addendum: “Well, Hot Dog, There’s an Epilogue”

I don’t really have the numbers in front of me, but I think it’s been around a month or so since the first pages of this raving lunacy in convenient essay form were conceived. Like I said in the original conclusion, I still, to this day, uphold the tradition of pissing myself off at restaurants in the suburbs whenever I have the chance. And over that magical Christmas vacation (or “winter recess,” which, one must admit, sounds pretty stupid) of 2002-2003, I had an experience so nice that I went through it twice in the span of about an hour.

 

Over most of the second week of vacation, I spent a few days with some relatives that reside in Schaumburg, Illinois, just a quick jaunt down the Eisenhower from my original hometown of Arlington Heights. For the uninitiated, Schaumburg is renowned nationwide for being, basically, “The city where Woodfield is.” As with most major malls, there is a plethora of satellite, if you will, shopping centers. Call it a commercial sphere of influence. These offshoot establishments tend to have derivative names, like “Woodfield East,” “The Streets of Woodfield,” or “Woodfield Gardens.” Of course, the existence of a garden, in a field, which happens to consist of wood is enough to make your head spin if you really think about it. So don’t. If you so desire, especially if you’re bored after you finish reading this, you can play Create-a-Strip-Mall by stringing together various pleasant-sounding geographical terms, and adding an extra e to the ends of words, like Briar Ridge Towne, Southe Hill Marketplace, and so forth. It’s urban-development fun for everyone.

 

So on New Year’s Eve, I was getting ready to have what was sure to be a fun night with my relatives, old friends, and some people I’ve never met that I may have been vaguely familiar with only by some contrived association and will most likely never see again in my life. But in the midst of getting ready for this gala affair, I realized that it was only noon, and my cousin was at band practice, leaving me with not much to do. I tried to play video games, but I couldn’t figure out the A/V cords and lines and such. Also, I thought about lounging around and eating honey-roasted peanuts for the next four hours, but I didn’t feel like being sick for the next two days. Call me crazy.

 

With my first two options a no-go, I decided my last resort was to hang out with people. Yes, socializing was lower on the depth chart than video games and junk food. Yes, even outside the realm of school, I have no sense of priority. All was not lost, however. Thanks to one of those Freak Midwestern Weather Patterns©, the 31st of December was a balmy 50 degrees in the greater Chicago area. Considering what we usually get from December to February, this was a can’t-miss prospect. I’d be crazy to let this great last day of 2002 go to waste. So even though I had nobody to spend the day with, I could at least get some fresh air and walk around town for a few hours. I don’t suppose there’s much to say about that whole part, I basically walked around town for a few hours. However, it’s worth mentioning that I did see an uncharacteristically large flock of geese walking around a park. Because I want you to finish reading this, I’m just going to have to hold myself back and not elaborate any further on seeing geese. I hope you know how hard this is.

 

By about 3:30, all that walking had made me hungry. I passed by a little place called Taylor Street Pizza, a restaurant, which judging by the interior décor, prides itself on recreating Chicago-style food. At this time I must let you know, in the event that you aren’t aware, that Chicago has some of the best local delicacies in the United States. The deep-dish pizza calls the Windy City home, and people of Chicago and its suburbs will not appreciate bad Pizza Hut variations.

 

But beyond that, there is the matter of the Chicago-style hot dog. Most people think of hot dogs as a very pedestrian food, and often like to quip about “you never know what’s in those things, ha-ha.” They don’t know better! They’re hot dog heathens! Chicago’s take on the hot dog is a very interesting one: one 100% Vienna Beef sausage (no pig testicle, or turkey brain, or other suggestions from those who don’t know better…they have to be all beef to be kosher, what with the high Jewish population of the city and all) on a poppy-seed bun, dressed with yellow mustard, sweet relish, cucumber slices, diced onions, tomatoes, two sport peppers, a pickle slice, and a dash of celery salt to top it all off. That’s not just a hot dog…that’s a meal. If you’re a careful reader, or unacquainted with any of this, you’ll notice a certain something conspicuous by its absence.

 

So I walk into Taylor Street Pizza, with visions of well-dressed dogs dancing in my head, and there was nobody there. Not one person visible from the waiting area, just the sound of what was ostensibly a college football game on TV. But a man did come out a few seconds later, and, yes, I know what you’re expecting me to say by now: “Ahh! It was some crazy foreigner, and he looked like Erik Estrada auditioning for a part as a guru in a Beatles documentary! By the way, did I mention that I love Abbey Road? Ooh, look at me! I’m a pretentious asshole that can’t complete a sentence without going off on tangents to show off all the things that I know and you don’t!”

 

Well, that’s where you’re (partially) wrong, faithful reader. It was possibly the most normal-looking person I’ve ever seen staffing a restaurant in the suburbs. I was taken aback. He looked like a cross between Ted Danson and That Guy That Played Al Bundy. A real guy that, if I was 21 and wasn’t vehemently against consuming alcohol, would like to sit and have a few beers with. And he seemed like he was probably from around here.

“I’ll have one Chicago-style hot dog and a Mountain Dew,” I said, knowing full well that if some middle-school punk were around, he’d start spouting off the bullshit urban legends about what was in my hot dog and what would happen if I drank Mountain Dew. (I think it’s worth mentioning that today, some loser who would be sitting on his ass playing Japanese video games in his basement for sixteen hours a day if it wasn’t for compulsory education spouted off the abovementioned bullshit! And he was a junior! Or was intended to be despite a credit deficit. Whatever. The moral of the story is this: don’t watch those cartoons where the spiky blue-haired guys go “Super Mega Power Go!” with the weird streaky backgrounds, or you’ll become a loser. )

 

“All right, that’s $2.39, and that’ll be about a minute or so.”

I waited about a minute. Then I started getting into the “or so” period. After a while it was safe to say I had been waiting far beyond so. So was long gone. We were starting to get into la, which is the indefinite period of time that follows so. About ten minutes later, The Al Bundy/Sam Malone Guy finally emerged with my hot dog. I didn’t comment on the long wait, I just paid, took my food, and walked back to my cousin’s house to indulge in the Second City’s spectacular sausage.

 

Then I saw something that made me sick, absolutely sick to my stomach. Somebody spilled blood all over my hot dog! That’s disgusting! Then I realized that the blood was awfully coagulated, and seemed awfully bright red. Upon further investigation, I realized that it wasn’t blood: somebody put ketchup on my Chicago-style hot dog! And even though there wasn’t the risk of contracting AIDS, that’s also disgusting!

 

I was outraged that my hot dog had been adulterated by ketchup. You do NOT, under any circumstances, put ketchup on what is advertised as a Chicago-style hot dog. I once saw a man get fired from a hot dog stand for putting ketchup on a hot dog without asking the customer. Everything else was there; he just felt it was necessary to add ketchup. I don’t know why. Of the 57 Varieties, none of them go on a Chicago-style hot dog. Because I can’t let something like this go un-complained about, I told everybody in the house about this travesty, using my whiniest, angriest voice. (Which, one could argue, is not too far removed from my normal voice.)

“I do NOT believe this, people! There is KETCHUP on my hot dog!” I said.

“Ketchup. Hmm. You don’t put that on a hot dog. Crazy guy,” my cousin replied.

“This is nuts! I can’t believe this!”

“Yeah well, when you’re in Schaumburg, check your food when you’re there. And besides, it’s New Year’s Eve. You think he gives a damn if he put ketchup on your hot dog?”

He did agree with me, but obviously lacked the fervor that I had for the issue. He wouldn’t keep whining about it. And he sure as hell wouldn’t sit down and write an essay about it. And he wouldn’t do what I did after that.

“Screw this crap, I’m going to Zippy’s! I will not be denied! I want a Chicago-style hot dog, WITHOUT KETCHUP, and I’m sure as hell going to get it!”

“…whatever. I’ll leave the front door open.”

 

Yes, after all of that, I decided to try another nearby restaurant, one, which I knew from past experience, was going to be stocked with strange-looking migrants that always screw up your order.

So I walked over to Zippy’s, Home Of The Cheesy Beef. That has no relevance, but you can’t argue that the name just sounds funny. Cheesy Beef. Come on. Sure enough, the place was full of people with poor English and strange names. This description is not exclusive to the employees, for the record. I went through the motions, ordered my hot dog, but stressed “no ketchup, please,” using the good old “if I speak louder and slower you’ll understand my English better” act.

“We do not put ketchup on our hot dogs here,” said the woman in broken English.

Yes! She understood me! I guess that means that if I speak louder and slower, they will understand my English better! I’ll have to use that little trick more often.

 

So I got the hot dog, along with a chocolate malt, checked the dog, and there was not a drop of ketchup. I was so happy about getting this perfect order that I spontaneously broke into song, Broadway-style!

Hot Dog: to the tune of Bargain, by the Who

I finally got me a sausage, I went through every dollar I had.

To find you I went to a place that made me mad.

I’d wait in a line just to get you; I’d walk all through town during the day.

Without the ketchup I was not the least bit sad.

I call that a hot dog, the best I ever had…the best I ever had!!!

 

And on that note, it was the best New Year’s Eve…ever!

--------------

comments etc. please.

[Guest ISportsFan]

I loved it, mainly because it's mostly true.

 

And if you put ketchup on my hot dog, I will make sure I spill blood.

 

Jason

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

Could you explain the events surrounding this article (ie: Why did you write it?)

 

It was an enjoyable read, but employed way too many pop-culture references. What if one never heard of the soup nazi?

[Guest The Czech Republic]

Could you explain the events surrounding this article (ie: Why did you write it?)

Hey, good call. This was for the hybrid AmLit/USHist course I took junior year. We just wrapped up Tim O'Brien's book The Things They Carried (I recommend it most highly) which is a great book about Vietnam experiences in which the author suddenly breaks down the fourth wall and tells us some of what he wrote is embellished, and some outright false. Our assignment was to write about a life experience and embellish it. Thus, this.

 

As for pop culture references everywhere, that's a result of too much Dennis Miller as a literary influence.

[Guest Fook_Hing_Ho]

Good read.

 

Loved the Taxi reference.

 

What grade did you get on this?

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

That also explains the big words.

 

"What's a Battle?"

 

- Rudoph Wiggam

[Guest The Czech Republic]

What grade did you get on this?

100%, thank you very much. I think either the Taxi or the Bob Newhart Show reference won that A+.

[Guest Jobber of the Week]

We had an In & Out Burger open here years ago.

 

They have been PACKED every hour of their operation for about five or seven years now.

 

I'm convinced that it's because they all hire English-speaking clean-cut white kids from our suburbs. I've never once heard an accent or a foreign language in that place. I hate to sound racist, but thems the facts....

[Guest evenflowDDT]

Ahh, now that I understand the prompt for the assignment the essay makes sense. Otherwise it's just all over the place...no real topic at all, like do you hate fast food, do you love fast food despite it not being good, do you enjoy the bad service, are you a masochist for going back to these places, etc.

[Guest The Czech Republic]

Ahh, now that I understand the prompt for the assignment the essay makes sense. Otherwise it's just all over the place...no real topic at all, like do you hate fast food, do you love fast food despite it not being good, do you enjoy the bad service, are you a masochist for going back to these places, etc.

Yes to all of the above.

 

 

Ooh, a smiley. I'm lame.

 

Hey, I'm Rico_Constantino!!

[Guest DrTom]

Since it was for an English class, there were a few grammatical mistakes that would have prevented me from giving you a 100% on this. Still, it was definitely an entertaining read, and certainly deserving of an A.

[Guest Edwin MacPhisto]

The Things They Carried is pretty good. I also recommend O'Brien's Going After Cacciato, which is a surreal romp from Vietnam to France.

[Guest The Czech Republic]

Since it was for an English class, there were a few grammatical mistakes that would have prevented me from giving you a 100% on this. Still, it was definitely an entertaining read, and certainly deserving of an A.

Yeah I had to make a few edits when I reprinted it here, and I may've screwed up some grammar in the process. And then there was probably a bunch that was there in the first place.

[Guest DerangedHermit]

Let me be the first to say Chicago sucks.

 

Otherwise, this is a pretty good essay.

[Guest Memphis]

Never begin a sentence with the word 'and'.

 

Other than that, quite brilliant.

 

M

[Guest DrTom]

Actually, there's nothing wrong with beginning a sentence with "and" or "but." There never was, in fact, but a few grammarians got their shorts all tied up whenever someone did, so they made it "bad" by fiat.

[Guest HungryJack]

Actually, it's perfectly acceptable to begin a sentence with And these days. So I hear. The prevailing attitude is that you shouldn't , but

it's not technically wrong.

 

 

Tom, I hate you.

[Guest Edwin MacPhisto]

Eh on "And." You can do whatever you want as long as you know what you're doing. Learn the rules, and then break them appropriately for maximum effect.

[Guest Memphis]

Actually, there's nothing wrong with beginning a sentence with "and" or "but." There never was, in fact, but a few grammarians got their shorts all tied up whenever someone did, so they made it "bad" by fiat.

Once again, I've been enlightend by Dr.Tom.

 

Personally, I feel it breaks the flow of a sentence and just appears to be incorrect. However, my education (that being starting a sentence with 'and' is unacceptable being drilled into my head) obviously would have played a large role in myself thinking this way.