Pages

Friday, December 2, 2016

Words

Jennifer called me the other day.  She had a punctuation question for me.  There was a lot to love about that.  For one thing, I was flattered that she would ask me when my blog is peppered with grammatical mistakes.  Mostly, I love that Jennifer takes grammar seriously.  Like I told her, apostrophes in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing.

She asked me her question (girls varsity basketball or girls' varsity basketball?) and I wasn't positive of the answer.  I wished Emma was there to weigh in.  I asked Jennifer if she'd googled it.  Of course she had, she said she found mixed results.  I looked up on MaxPreps and also looked in the Deseret News which always has lots of sports stories.  Both places supported no apostrophe.  So that was my opinion.

(When Emma got home, I asked her what she thought.  She said, wonderingly, "That is a good question!"

Then Jennifer innocently asked me how I was doing and I launched into a story about my anxiety about our YW activity and she possibly wished she'd just not asked.

Probably not though.  Jennifer is stellar and very kind.

Our YW activity was caroling at the local rest home.  Caroling is the worst.  I know that is a scandalous thing to say around my sisters, but I find it super awkward when carolers come to my door and so I don't like to inflict the awkwardness on other people.

My laurels wanted to do it though, so away we went.

I found some typed up carols in an envelop in a box in my YW closet.  (That YW closet is sort of like Mary Poppins' bag.  It is an unending supply of just STUFF and how does it all fit?!?)  I thought the typed up words may come in handy.

I handed out the words to the girls and we decided which songs we were going to sing.

Here was one of the songs, The First Nowell.


Did the person that typed these words just type them from memory and not know how to spell Noel?  Did they copy it from another source?  A source that had, "Nowell, Nowell, Born is the King of Israel..."

We all carefully didn't make eye contact while we sang the song, knowing we would start to laugh.

After every song, one lady would cheer and say, "Sing more!"

After our third song, a man who had been enthusiastic at the first, said, "OK, that's enough!"

Sometimes I meet other people that feel the same way as I do about Christmas caroling.

4 comments:

Jennifer said...

Nowell! That hurts me. I can't sing anyway, but I wouldn't have been able to continue! :) I'm glad it went well. Thanks for being my go-to source for info.

Mark Dahl said...

"Bah Humbug" Thelma

Your mom

Olivia Cobian said...

I've seen Nowell other places. I think it's an older English version of Noel. Or maybe it's just a problem with punctuation and should read: "No, well, born is the King of Israel." In other words, stick to what really matters.

Olivia Cobian said...

Shoot. I just realized that my comment might sound like I'm telling you to stick with what really matters. That was not my intention. I meant what really matters is that the King of Israel is born. You are doing a good job of sticking to what really matters. Like you said, words! Can't live with them, can't live without them!

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails