TIM WLDMON:Of participles and poker: A college primer

My daughter Wriley started college in August. She is a freshman at Northeast Mississippi Community College.

The other day her mother - my lovely and talented wife Alison - and I drove the 20 minutes up U.S. Highway 45 to see her. We met at Fisher's restaurant to eat hamburgers, talk about school and go over some of her English.

Just so you are not confused, she learned to speak southern English just fine over the past 18 years around our home. So actually talking English is not a problem. What I am talking about is English 101 as in the college course. She was needing some help.

Can't read the music

Wriley and her mother just assume that because I am a writer, I am therefore gifted in English. I am probably about average, actually. But when it comes to writing, I play it by ear. I can play the tune, but don't ask me to read the music sheet. I could not tell you - or show you - for example, the difference between a dangling participle and a split infinitive. My guess is that 90 percent of you people reading this column can't even begin to tell me what a participle or an infinitive is, much less how it is they get to the point of dangling or splitting. Am I right? Sure I am. Why, we Mississippians are too busy eating to stop and consider these things.

But what she wanted us to assist her with was turning sentences from passive to active and then some direction on dealing with parallel sentences. It has been so long since either Alison or I had actually done any significant school work we were unsure we could actually be of any help.

The first problem was the fact that our eyesight had really deteriorated since our days at Itawamba Junior College and Dear Ol' State. So Alison held the textbook out in front of her, moving it back and forth, down and around trying to find that perfect distance from which to read. She has some cheap reading glasses she bought at Wal Mart, but I have teased her so much that she looks like a librarian that she doesn't carry them around much. Not that there is anything wrong with being a librarian understand, that is NOT what I am saying. It's just the glasses make her look too authoritative and cause me to shy away from talking to her. You know that peer-over-the-glasses look? Well, who wants that from their spouse?

Now where were we? Oh yes, helping Wriley with her freshman English. Well, between more mustard for my burger and more ketchup for my fries I helped as best I could. As did Alison. We finished about half of it. I told Wriley I could help her more with parallel parking than I could with parallel sentences.

A different kind of GPA
Then I told her if the pressures of college life got to be too much sometimes, she could take a page out of her old man's college play book and get your friends together for a good game of poker. That always worked for me. In fact, that first semester at State it worked almost every night of the week until the wee hours of the morning. Yes sir, I relieved that classroom stress by making sure I played a lot of poker and many mornings didn't even bother to go to class at all. GPA to me meant, (G)o ahead, (P)lay your (A)ce. As the Bible says, sin is fun for a season and then it was time to go home for Christmas and wait for the grades to come in the mail. My card playing days basically ended during the holidays with an ultimatum from the man paying my college tuition.

But who knew at the time, however, that poker playing on television would become such a national phenomenon. Flip the channels any given night and you are going to see poker matches on three or four channels. Well, just think of the money I could be making today had I stuck with it back in college. No doubt I would be a household name to many pathetic Americans who have nothing better to do than watch people play cards on television. But instead, I gave up poker and went back to the classroom. And for what? So I could graduate from college with a major in communications and to this day not be able to tell the difference between a dangling participle and a dang split infinitive.

Well, it was closing time and we finished our iced tea. I told Wriley I love her, but I had done all I could do, that she would have to find help elsewhere...Or take up poker...

Tim Wildmon lives in Baldwyn. His column is published every other week. His e-mail address is twildmon@afa.net.

News Added: 23 September, 2007

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