If You Can’t Speak Correctly (Especially To Defend Your Case Against A School) Don’t Speak At All

If you’re going to speak to the press to defend your case?

Please.

For the love of God and your former English teachers.

Use proper grammar.

An Ohio mother, defending her 5 year-old’s right to sport a mohawk haircut, articulated (and I use that term with tongue in cheek), “They seen his hair like it was. All the little kids were going over and feeling on it and everything.”

maddoxfauwhawk

Poor little Maddox Brangelina, sporting a mohawk-do.

 

I chose to use a pic of Maddox Brangelina to protect the little 5 year old kindergartener’s innocence. Poor Maddox lost his right to privacy once his famous parents started parading him around. Awww, shoot. What am I saying? That little 5 year old Ohioan lost his right once his mother started defending his haircut in the press, complete with personal photo. 

“They seen his hair like it was.”

Yes. I’m sure they “seen it.” It’s right there, on top of his sweet, little head. I have no issues with mohawks. But apparently, the school has a policy against distracting attire. And they deem this hairstyle distracting.

Wait. You confirmed that.

“All the little kids were going over and feeling on it and everything.”

Never mind the incorrect grammar. What about your defense?

Lady, you might want to carefully consider your choice of words the next time you want to defend your God given right.

And maybe hire a lawyer to do the talking for you.

(Kudos to Lylah M. Alphonse, senior editor at Yahoo! Shine for quoting this mother verbatim. It made my day and a blog post!)

4 Comments

Filed under I'm Baffled (And Because I Love The Word Baffled), Soapbox

4 responses to “If You Can’t Speak Correctly (Especially To Defend Your Case Against A School) Don’t Speak At All

  1. Boy, can I hear her voice in my head. I live in Ohio and unfortunately, this type of grammar is pretty common. Especially when newscasters look for people on the street to interview.

  2. I shuddered when I read that article too. And my kids only get mohawks on summer breaks, so it has time to grow out by the time they have to be presentable again. 🙂

  3. Jayne

    This is my third attempt at writing a comment here without turning it into a tome … I know just what you’re saying but then I too can hear an accent and wonder if the *phraseology* (rather than grammar) is a regional quirk? I speak The Queen’s English with a southern English accent – should that make me sound automatically more articulate to others? I suspect it does, but it shouldn’t. That being said, this is something I struggle with. UK TV is flooded with presenters with strong regional accents now and I’ll admit that one in particular makes me instantly (and illogically) think: ‘stupid little Welsh git’ every time I hear his squeaky bedpost voice.

    On grammar generally – spare me. Not a day goes by without my noticing something awful and it makes me wince every time. I’m actually finding now that some feedback in things like newspapers is quite literally incomprehensible – I’ll read it two, three times but the spelling, grammar and plain misuse of words is so bad that I can’t make any sense of what the writer is actually trying to say. ***

    Mohawks in school as a protest … give me a break … on both sides actually. There are way, way more important things to be fired up about. Mrs Mohawk should focus on one of them (like child poverty elsewhere) and try to involve the school in raising awareness and making a difference.

    I tell you – I’m getting old.

    ***If you want a laugh on misuse of words and bad grammar, you may find this funny. They’re all amusing but number 10 really tickled me and is what I’m thinking of here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/dumbest-things-ever-said-on-the-internet

  4. I have nothing against the haircut, how can I, it’s similar to mine. 😀 Actually, my grammar is bad too, but not quite as bad as that.

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