By Joe Diorio
Inspector Harry Conjugation from the Grammar Police (yes, “to serve and correct” is the department’s motto) parked his unmarked police car in front of the Donut Den in Nashville’s Green Hills neighborhood.
“No damn hills to speak of and not very much is green,” he muttered to himself. Harry despised incorrect labeling. He exited his vehicle and strode inside to get his daily coffee and donut. “Yes, I’m a damn cliché,” he thought. He dropped the cigarette he was nursing to the ground and snuffed it out with his shoe before going inside. As he did every day, he swore to himself that one cigarette would be his last. It was a lie he kept repeating every day, too.
Inside Loretta Scone was pouring Harry’s coffee. Ten years as a customer taught her how Harry liked his morning Cuppa Joe, “Cuppa Joe” being an iconic nickname dating back, or so history suggests, to World War I when Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels banned alcohol on Naval ships, therefore leaving coffee as the strongest beverage available. Sailors therefore referred to this shot of caffeine as their “Cuppa Joe.” Harry loved reminding himself of the lexigraphy of words and phrases.
Harry looked at his smart phone (“And why is it smart? Doesn’t do a damn thing unless you tell it to.”) as Loretta finished pouring his coffee. She also slipped a sheet of paper, folded in a napkin, to him.
Since Loretta never gave Harry a napkin (“Get your own damn napkin,” she was fond of saying to anyone who had to courage to ask her for one.) getting a napkin from Loretta made him take note. He looked closer and saw something scribbled on the napkin.
Scrawled in red Sharpie were the words, “This is a ROBBARY”.
Harry looked up over his teardrop shaped aviator sunglasses to see two nervous young men – wearing dirty sweatshirts and knit caps – sitting at one of the few tables the Donut Den has available to customers. He was less than 10 feet from them when he spoke.
“You gentlemen have some explaining to do, don’t you?” Harry asked.
Nervous kid #1 stood up, producing a switchblade style knife. “Explain what? To WHO?”
Harry maintained his cool before speaking. “Well, for starters, you can’t spell very well,” Harry calmly said, pointing to the spelling of the word “ROBBARY” on the note.
“And punctuation OUTSIDE of the quote marks? You really weren’t paying attention in English Grammar class, were you?” Harry took a few steps toward the two perps (“Perps” being a very old slang term for “perpetrator,” which has recently been replaced by police with the word “actor.” But c’mon, “perp” is just so much more fun to say. Whoops, I’m digressing again.)
Nervous kid #1 decided he had heard enough and lunged at Harry, who deftly stepped to one side, produced his pocket-size super soaker and blasted the perp/actor with blue editor’s ink. The ink hit the kid square between the eyes.
“AHHH, my eyes,” Nervous kid #1 screamed. “I’m not supposed to get editor’s ink in my eyes.”
Harry shoved the kid aside with his foot and turned to Nervous kid #2 who was making a move toward Loretta.
He never made it. Harry grabbed him by the collar, lifted him from the floor, bringing his face to within inches of Harry’s. Nervous kid #2 was sweating as Harry spoke to him through gritted teeth.
“Look, punk, I’m tired of dealing with your kind. The kind who says ‘your’ when they really mean ‘you’re’ in a sentence. The kind who dangles modifiers. The kind who doesn’t care if he uses the Oxford Comma or not. You know how many puppies have died because your kind just won’t use the Oxford Comma? Well, do ya punk?”
Harry was about to throw Nervous kid #2 aside when someone’s hand grabbed his arm.
“That’s enough, Inspector Conjugation,” the voice was from Captain Eloise Editor, who has run the Bureau of Correct Grammar since before Ted Bernstein was a copy editor at The New York Times, or so goes the rumor. There was another rumor that she dated Benjamin Dryer, but let’s not get carried away here.
Harry pulled away from his Captain. “These punks have to learn!” he said.
“They’re not going to learn by browbeating the rules of grammar into them, Inspector. If that was the case, then everybody would be hiring Catholic nuns to run their schools.”
“So, he’s just gonna be let go?” Harry said, pointing to Nervous kid #1.
“Frist, stop dropping your gerunds,” Captain Editor said. “Second, no. He’ll go into a rehab grammar course and probably do some time in juvenile hall.”
An approaching siren – several of them, in fact – caught Captain Editor’s attention. “Nashville Metro police,” she said. “Our work here is done.”
Harry was not moving from where he stood. “They need to be corrected,” he protested. Their subject and verbs probably don’t even agree.”
“We can’t change the world ourselves, Inspector. Just one blue mark at a time,” Captain Editor said as she and Harry left the Donut Den, driving away seconds before two Metro Nashville police cars pulled up. It was amazing that the traffic on Hillsboro Pike was light enough to let Harry and the Captain make a smooth departure.
The MNPD cops ran inside, finding Nervous kid #1 and #2 in a very submissive role.
“What’s with all the blue ink on this one’s face?” one of the officers said, looking at Loretta.
“Oh, that nut Harry Conjugation was here.”
“HIM? Jesus Christ,” the police officer said. “When will that guy understand he isn’t the police. Did he do any damage?”
“Yeah, he damaged my eyes, Officer Kelly” Nervous kid #1 said, looking at the name tag of the police officer who was standing over him.
“Really? Your eyes are good enough to read my name tag, so it can’t be that bad. On your feet, punk.”
“Hey, you’re arresting US? What about that guy Harry?”
Officer Kelly shrugged. “He interrupted an armed robbery. He made a little mess with blue paint on your face. That’s about it.” Officer Kelly looked at the robbery note that Loretta handed him. “Jesus Christ, can’t you just use a generative A.I. system to write your stick-up notes? You know, one that knows how to spell?” The two perps were hauled off to justice.
A few miles away Harry was behind the wheel of his car, fuming at the world. He gripped the wheel tighter than a Boa Constrictor grips its prey and muttered.
“People don’t write properly anymore,” he groused. “They’ll say ‘I’m like’ along with a sound effect or, occasionally a word. Or they start a sentence with ‘Let’s do this,’ not even bothering to put a subject noun in place.”
He passed a billboard on Hillsboro Pike, offering cheap mobile phones and urging the reader to “Reach out” for a discount. “They can’t even say ‘contact,’ write to,’ or ‘talk to us’. Crap but the world is going to elucidation hell.”
His radio squawked, “Harry, it’s Captain Typo. Let’s have a conversation about your conduct at the Donut Den.”
Harry ignored the radio call. “Conversation, huh? He means ‘discussion’. Dude can’t even write. Next, he’s going to tell someone he and I decided to have a ‘conversate,’ using an intransitive verb as a noun.”
Harry continued his wallowing with grammatical pity. “Ever hear someone say they needed some ‘leverage’ in a situation, yet there was no fulcrum involved? And why is ‘grow’ used as a metaphorical transitive verb, as in ‘Grow your business’?”
“I know what Cap is going to talk about. He’s going to give me the ‘be nice to the suspects’ talk, then close with something like ‘moving forward.’ Yeah, he’s pulling that phrase from some dead area of his brain … the same area where people grab and use the word ‘synergy’ or ‘it is what it is’.”
Harry continued musing to himself. Then a moment of consolation when he realized that, as long as people keep screwing up their grammar, he’ll always have a job. And Loretta will always have her favorite detective.
He parked in front of the Bellevue Branch of the Nashville Public Library. It was a good front for the Grammar Police … at least they let the Grammar Police use their conference rooms. As he exited the vehicle he heard a fellow speaking loudly on his mobile phone.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there with youse guys tonight,” the fellow said.
YOUSE GUYS? Harry’s eye twitched as he reached for his super soaker …
Joe Diorio Writer, editor. 