The Joys of Irregular Verbs

JT decided that last weekend's homework should be completed on Friday night, so as to free up his weekend for the non-stop party that is a sleepover with six 9 year old boys.

I will let you briefly digest what that meant for my weekend.

Friday's assignment: Irregular verbs. The task: change verbs from the present to past tense and then back again. It was all sorts of fun.

Never mind that part of the assignment asked me to think in a fashion I simply could not master (going from past back to present tense was more than I could handle at the end of the week). Never mind that I am not a big fan of grammar even in my finest moments. Never mind that it was Friday, traditionally the point in the week when I'm lucky to make it up the stairs before I pass out from exhaustion.

We would complete this assignment. We completed this assignment.

In fact, we were doing quite nicely until we came to this sentence: "They went to the library." We needed to convert it to present tense. We were stuck and finally agreed upon "They go to the library." I knew it was wrong, but I was way past giving a damn. And it would certainly be much better than the option JT selected for a different part of the page, one that required making present tense words into past tense words. To convert "bring" to the past tense, JT recommended "brang."

You, of course might have brought something. We brang it, suggesting a certain ghetto style here at Sassafras House.

Are you feeling critical of our verb usage practices? Two words for you: Bring it.