I happy grammar

Grammar can be tricky.

Marianne told me recently about a certain unnamed English teacher who taught her students that happy was a verb.  (Marianne and I went to high school with this person, but that doesn't make it right.)

I've been trying ever since to use happy as a verb.  I happy you.  I happy my shoes.  I will happy as soon as I am done happying these dishes.  Things like that.  If it wasn't so happy, it would be sad.

Grammar, grammar, grammar.

Yesterday Mark was working on a grammar assignment.  He needed to find the possessive pronouns.

Here was the sentence:

I wish I had a voice like yours.

He asked, "Is 'voice' the possessive pronoun?"

I said, "No.  For one thing, it isn't a pronoun."

He puzzled over it some more.

"I don't know," he said, "I really think it's 'voice'."

I said, "It's 'yours'.  Yours is a pronoun and it is a possessive.  It tells you whose voice it is."

"I don't think so," Mark said. (I think this is a drawback of homeschooling.  My children have seen me lose my keys and cell phone so many times I've lost all credit in the smarts department.)

I said, "Trust me, Mark, it is."

He said, "But 'voice' is what is being possessed.  Voice is the possessive pronoun."

"Yours is a pronoun,"  I said, "It's possessive." 

Who knows how long we would have gone on like this but Mark finally caved and circled 'yours' on his paper.  Sometimes I happy that I should happy him away.  Maybe there's a teacher that happies enough that Mark would happy her.