With the approach of my birthday in a few month's time, I've gone through the annual motions, such as "attempt to figure out if I've actually accomplished anything this year," "compile list of foods I've been craving," and "let my family know what I actually do want, aside from food and world peace." It's honestly a pretty modest list, and has been so for years. It has never, for example, included twenty-three cats.
Mind you, I like cats - it's just that I could never eat twenty-three at once!
No, no, seriously. I love cats; I find them beautiful and funny and I vastly enjoy their company. The two I live with prove an unending source of delight. I just have no desire for more than, say, three.
This brings us to the importance of commas.
A handful of years ago, I turned twenty-three and my mother, who resides in Texas while I live on the Oregon coast, sent me a card. It was really cute, too, with a white fluffy cat on the front, innocently licking its nose and hoping the yellow feather stuck to its muzzle evades notice. She wrote a sweet message inside, telling me she was proud of me, that she loves me, and wishing me a "happy twenty-third Cat!"
Absolutely tickled, I proceeded to show the card - sweetness, oh-so-innocent feline, and missing comma - to my grandpa and my biological mother.
"Is it only the twenty-third cat that has to be happy?" Maggie inquired, eyes a-twinkle with mischief.
"The first twenty-two," came Grandfather's musing pronouncement, "are grumpy because they got left out."
Some people assume the role of grammar police through an insatiable urge to follow the letter of the linguistic law. I guess maybe others do so because it fills some deep personal need to show that they know better than others. On the other hand, there are those of us who take up the punctuation-peppered mantle because their brains refuse to shut up and accept that they really do know what the other person meant. Rather, their recalcitrant grey matter insistently presents them with...say...the image of twenty-two grumpy cats and one gleeful one, lined up behind a big ol' cake, wearing party hats.
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