See you Monday.

When my sister and I were very little, my Dad used to put us to bed. Every night he would tuck us in, get himself comfortable, then ask us the same question to start our ritual. "OK beautiful girls, what are the nine parts of speech?” My sister and I would list them all, maybe struggling to remember interjections or conjunctions. Then he would ask us which one we wanted to hear about tonight. That was a huge question. The wrong answer would get us a short story and quick bedtime. Articles were worthless; Daddy would kiss us right after “a, an, and the” and that was all we got. Interjections were fun but short.

Verbs were good if you wanted a long, exciting story with lots of action. You could always extend the story by asking about other tenses or adverbs. Nouns started out easy, with “person, place or thing”, but there were choices to make after that, like concrete or abstract. When Daddy was in a good mood, he would go through adjectives too.

The absolute, hands-down best were the pronouns. Pronouns were so great that you couldn’t waste them by hearing them every night. You saved them up to end a really good day. We could all talk about I, and you, and he, she, it and point to the right person or stuffed animal as we said each. Those were naturally followed by their parallels, me and you and him, her, it. Pronouns ended with our favorite of all time, the Monster Pronouns. We would summon the Monster Pronouns together: This! That! These! Those!, then go to sleep happy, knowing they would guard our dreams.

I’ll be hanging out with my nephews the next couple days. They might be too young for the nine parts of speech, but they are very advanced. I could whisper the Monster Pronouns to them as they go down for naptime.