Communication Barriers

My parents have gone on vacation, once again, and left me here to take care of their pets and make sure the house doesn’t blow up. Not quite sure if I'm really the person to keep the latter from happening, but they seem to have faith in me, so whatever.

Background pic from here, edited by me :)

Most of the time when they go on vacation, I stay at my own apartment, sleep in my own bed, and come over to the house twice a day to feed the dog and cats, and make sure everything is okay. This time though, I decided to go ahead and stay at their house, partially because I hate driving out here twice a day, and partly because their house is about halfway between my apartment and school. You do the math.

It’s been nice, I have the house to myself, I have permission to eat any of their food that I want, and a nice king-size bed to sprawl out on.

The first couple days were great, I got up whenever I wanted to, watched whatever I wanted to on TV, had plenty to eat, and took good care of the pets. And if it had stayed that way, it would have been bliss!!

I think the dog and I realized the major flaw in this plan at about the same time. Apparently, she was expecting me to speak “dog”. In school, they taught me French and they taught me Spanish, but nowhere on any list did I see a class in which I could study dog, not even in college (and college has everything, right?). I can learn Latin, a language that’s not even spoken anymore, but I can’t learn dog. It's obvious that our educational system needs work.

Image created by me :)

These language barriers have caused the both of us a lot of undue stress. She obviously thinks that I should know the difference between “I need to go outside”, “Can we play?”, and “There’s a creepy stalker-guy outside with a pickaxe, call the police now”. There has been a lot of tension between us the past few days, because as long as she's not doing the “gotta pee” dance and crossing her legs, I go back to my schoolwork and ignore her, hoping she’ll leave me alone. She retaliates by going and getting in the bathtub and ignoring me, hoping that I’ll have some sort of epiphany and give in to her request.

Don't get me wrong, I've been loving on her, playing with her, and making sure she's fed, which is why I am completely flummoxed by her continued barking and whining. Something’s got to give though, maybe here in the next few days we can figure out some sort of rudimentry sign language or something, so that we don’t drive each other completely crazy.

Why Facebook is the Bane of Any English Teacher's Existence

I love Facebook, don’t get me wrong, it keeps me in contact with people I wouldn’t ordinarily get a chance to talk to. But every day, there’s something new to annoy me. I sign in and I’ve got people yelling at me who obviously don’t know that capital letters should be used to a) start a sentence, b) emphasize a word or phrase, or c) convey yelling. It really gets under my skin when I’m minding my own business, and suddenly there’s someone yelling to the world that nothing eventful happened at work, and now they’re home and bored. Seriously. You should yell when you find out that your baby’s father is a being from outer space, when your car rolls down a hill and explodes into a ball of flames, or when your foot turns an odd shade of green and then falls off. Those would be appropriate topics to shout about, and I would commend you for your appropriate use of the Caps Lock button.

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Speaking of when to use buttons, apparently the concept of when to use of the apostrophe in the English language is a very hard one to master. I meet someone new online, and all is going well, I’m thinking this is a pretty cool person to talk to! Then out they come with something like “I went their to see if they had you’re shirts, but they said its going to be a few days.” It all goes downhill from there. (If you don’t see what is wrong with that sentence, please step away from the computer and find an English professor immediately, if not sooner.) 

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I’ve also seen some people for whom butchering the English language is not enough, they apparently need to completely destroy it. Peoplee needd too realizee thatt itt makess myy brainn hurtt whenn Ii havee too filterr outt thee extraa letterss att thee endd off theirr wordss. See, not very fun, is it? Or maybe there are just an absurd number of Gollums running around, I don’t know. And if you’re going to use a cliché, at least get it right. There is no such thing as an “intensive purpose”, and worst can’t come to worst, because it’s the same thing! Seriously, if Facebook wasn’t so bloody convenient, I’d probably set it on fire.