iheardthat

Where do I begin? The greengrocer’s apostrophe drives me absolutely bonkers. Didn’t we all learn in the first grade that to form a plural, you add either “s” or “es”? Yes, we did. In school we didn’t add apostrophes to form plurals. So what, then, is causing people to do this, when the correct way typically requires less effort (fewer characters)?

I recently saw a paragraph, online, in which the writer used the following as nouns: look’s, idea’s, test’s, profile’s, initial’s, clothe’s, turn-on’s, thing’s, animal’s, and kid’s.

In. One. Paragraph.

I’m seeing this more and more frequently, and it’s depressing me. Seriously. Why are people doing this, and how can it be stopped? :-)

(am i the only guy, here—besides the one stephanie’s kissing? lol.)

yesterday i decided i must quit this habit. when a full-color photo in a major newspaper captured me doing it, i knew it had to end.

this. is. really. hard. but what’s helping is—chewing gum. have i stumbled upon something simple, yet profound?

i bite my lip when i’m bored/anxious/tense/bored. (yeah, that was intentional.) “type a” personality. overachiever. perfectionist. yadda yadda. i hate the rough feeling of my lips being chapped, so i bite off the skin, which causes them to, um, chap.

half the time, i don’t even realize i’m doing it. i keep catching myself, mid-meal. (sorry.) each time, i apply vaseline lip therapy and pop in a piece of gum. and when i chew gum—my mouth is too busy to bite my lip. after a while, i’m sick of the gum, and i spit it out. but within i really want to bite again. so the gum is definitely distracting me from biting….

is this substituting one behavior for another? um, yeah. is that bad in the long run? not sure. i’ll ask my therapist. but hell—there are worse things than chewing gum, right? in lieu of medication, i’d say it’s a fairly benign substitution. therapist’s out of town for a couple of weeks, so i’ll ask when he gets back.