Wednesday, January 26, 2011

In which I am horrified by an apostrophe

We're all fighting off colds, so while the immune system is busy, we seem to spend a lot of time staring into space. Even Meggie stared into space briefly today, and then let out a little series of Meggie-sized coughs. It was the saddest thing ever.

Just now as I was staring into space, I gradually started reading the text on the love bowl. This bowl was a wedding present, handmade by a lady I knew growing up, and it's called the "love" bowl because the text from I Corinthians 13 is painted in red around the inside. It's very pretty. Anyway, we'd eaten spaghetti out of it tonight, and I vaguely noticed the line: "Love does not insist on it's own way."

Wait a minute. I concentrated. "it's" - yes, there was definitely an apostrophe. I rallied the wandering neurons and applied the contraction test for which "its" to use: "Does not insist on it is" - nope, doesn't work - the apostrophe is wrong! The treasure of our house has a misplaced apostrophe! In fact, it's a bowl-o! NOOOO! How could we have had it two and a half years and I'd never noticed??

So I mentioned it to Jonathan, who was doing dishes. He was horrified too. He cleverly applied the dishwasher's test to the apostrophe: does it wipe off when you scrub at it?

THE APOSTROPHE WIPED OFF! It was only a bit of tomato! Yay!!

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