Tuesday, April 26, 2011

So What if I don't Capitalize?

While at church on Easter Sunday, I learned a valuable lesson in capitalization. While singing a praise song, the words pop up on the screen, "O death, where is your sting? O hell, where is your victory?"
While this may not catch everyone's attention, as an English teacher, I find joys in the little things in life. This happened to be one of them. Without capitalizing the word Hell, they've used it's more inappropriate brother, hell. Hell, representing the Christian afterlife for non-followers of Jesus Christ, should always be capitalized because it is the proper name for a place. While hell is better known as a curse word and is incidentally commonly preceded by the word "Oh".
So while in church on Sunday, I sang along with the words, "O hell." And I couldn't help but wonder if I was considered to be cussing since I knew the difference in the non-capitalized and the capitalized.
In reality, however, I simply had a good giggle about the typo and went on enjoying church.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

I Always Liked That One

I found her t-shirt today.
The red one that she always wore. I tried not to cry when my hands touched the fabric. The tears came anyway.
White letters decorated the front. They said something, formed words I should know. Every picture of her in my mind has that shirt. Every memory, she wears red.
I found that shirt today, and I thought of her. Of every good time. Of every bad time. I remembered her for the first time in a while. She must be mad that I have her shirt. It was her favorite one after all.
Cleaning out these memories isn’t as easy as she made it seem. It’s slow and tedious, and at times, it hurts. At least for me, it does. Sometimes, the memories are so raw that I can’t continue.
            But I must.
I want to be rid of her. At the same time, I want her here. That’s the reason I’ve put this off for so long. One side is finally winning. Finally I move on.
My mom never helps. “What happened to that girl?” she asks me every time I talk to her. “I always liked her.” I just tell her that I did, too. I always liked that one.
So I pack all of her things into one box. All the memories go in. I drop them in the dumpster outside my house. I say goodbye to her, all of her memories.
Everything but the red t-shirt.