The Rise And Fall Of The Grammar Nazi

The phone rang out in the dark and I picked it up with a huge grin.. It was my friend. He sounded grim. "What's wrong?", I asked. And he said, "You know Poli, I bleeded from the nose today." I shrieked, "Oh my God..... It's bled, not bleeded." Needless to say, he was shocked.

I am not to blame for this. What else do you expect from someone, who has been taught in a missionary school, with an Irish principal, and more English subjects in a class than all other subjects put together? And a large chunk of the blame goes to Mrs Moss(our English teacher for 4 years) who was such a great teacher, that she made us love this nitpicking.

Look at me now!! If Mrs. Moss heard my English today, she'd have nightmares for a week. The grammar Nazi in me rose steadily at first, right to the pinnacle, then started collapsing, till it faded into oblivion. What went wrong? Let's trace the life of our Nazi to find out.

Fed well and nurtured under the able guidance of the dictator SH(our principal), and trained as a master sword-fighter by the legendary teacher , M, our GN(Grammar Nazi :D) walked out of school with a cool swagger, waiting to unleash her sword at the slightest instance of a grammatical slip-up. GN lived with only one goal : Grammar above all else!

It was a happy day for GN when I started editing 'CRAP' - my college magazine. Being recognized for censuring - a dream come true. Little did GN realize that this was the beginning of the end..

It started with little things, me allowing a lot of colloquial content in the magazine (Come on.. It couldn't be mistaken for a boring award-winner). But the fatal blow was dealt by the talking. GN could not react fast enough when I talked - she was Blitzkrieged. The more I talked, the lesser she could speak. That probably explains the correlation of the deterioration of my language with the increase of my verbal interaction.

GN's loyal assistant Vocab had been impoverished as well. Gone were the superlative, impressive, abominable and atrocious . All that remained were awesome, sexy, sad and cheap.

Robbed of her ally and source of sustenance, GN died a slow death. I noticed only a few days back, when I thanked a friend for having 'feeded' us. Only then did I realize that GN had left me for good.