Miles O'Brien

My old school didn’t understand why none of us wanted to use the shiny new dark green playground equipment on the large flat freshly sealed blacktop.

Never mind the fact that it’s too hot on the pavement, the tar sealant smells horrible, and the color choice of the equipment guarantees 2nd degree burns…

We wanted the grass and wooden equipment back. But the school though wood was too much maintenance, And grass grows too much.

I’m not gonna go check to see if kids are even using it anymore, but satellite imagery shows the playground is still just as gross.

The whole point of that was to hilight how racist people like to call someone “educated” when what they really mean is “wow you sound white”

It was mocking the exact kind of person you seem to believe I am.

I always love when cough “educated” people (usually just what they like to say when they mean “not black”) go on about how “black people don’t speak proper English!” because certain vowels can be dropped here or there, grammar shifts, the works. Most of us have heard AAE (also maybe heard it called “Ebonics” if you’re a little older) at one point or another, and likely don’t have an issue understanding what anyone is saying. A few things that skew more metaphorical or slang words might slip by but you get the gist.

That’s the point of language. Convey information. If the information is conveyed, then language has done its job. Yay language.

If anyone wants to continue saying “it’s not PROPER English” well… I have bad news for you. Neither is any other modern form of English. So many words have been borrowed, or stolen, sentence structures have changed, entire words change meaning. And that’s just in the last 100 years.

English is an amalgamation of many different root languages, and has so many borrowed words and phrases, along with nearly every other modern language, can any of them still be said to be “proper”?

When I think of the difference between “proper English” and “improper English” I’m reminded of My Fair Lady. “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain” Eliza vs Henry Higgins (or 'enry 'iggins if you’re feeling improper)

A treadle sewing machine from 1908. I’ve been slowly breaking it down and cleaning the internals but it’s a slow process since it’s not a Singer with tons of documentation.