Feet together, back straight, head up. The nurse shoved me against the wall and told me something that changed my life forever.
"Five foot ten and a half," she said. "Good, get on the scale, please."
Perhaps this is not significant for you. A minor step in a routine physical examination. But I was stunned to the core of my being, because for the previous 25 years or so it had been the fervent belief of both myself and the Florida Department of Transportation that I topped out at 5' 9". Suddenly, with the skritch of a ballpoint in my medical file, I had gained an inch and a half. Not since I got married had a document changed my life so drastically.
Almost immediately -- after I made the nurse check twice more, with my shoes off -- I began feeling the difference. The air higher up was crisper, cleaner. I could see farther, to the glorious vistas of the horizon. Unconsciously I felt myself developing heretofore unsuspected alpha male characteristics. Well, not really unconsciously; I think I actually said, "Stand back! I am developing heretofore unsuspected alpha male characteristics!" But nurses are used to things like that and can ignore them easily since they have the firm and fully justified opinion that in any situation, even if the patient is 65-feet tall and kicking over buildings, the nurse is in charge. She gently escorted me to the scale where I discovered I had gained weight, which seemed reasonable, considering.
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If I suddenly gained an inch and a half, my girlfriend would be pissed. I'm 6'3" and she's 6' - and if I suddenly popped up to over 6'4" she'd be miffed.
Now, should we have kids, I'm going to forego the usual mobile for a miniature basketball hoop with a nerf basketball on a string. Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Give it time. At some point it begins to reverse. I'm missing almost an inch of "advantage" over my younger me.
Posts: 1167 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:but when they’re in that midrange things get fuzzy, especially when the actors tend towards leading roles
I would have been severely docked back in my journalism class for that sentence.... we were told it is ALWAYS "toward", not "towards" to be proper. And if you read it outloud "toward" works just as well as "towards".
Is that particular journalism rule no longer preached like it was in my college?
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Got me, I was never trained as a journalist (apart from two weeks of a journalism class I left when an unexpected spot in the packed Honors English class opened up). Both my first reader and my editor missed it, though, and they're both trained copyeditors. Unofficially both "toward" and "towards" are acceptable, with "toward" being more common in the US and "towards" being more common in the UK.
I missed it because I am now too tall to see my desk clearly.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Farmgirl: I would have been severely docked back in my journalism class for that sentence.... we were told it is ALWAYS "toward", not "towards" to be proper. And if you read it outloud "toward" works just as well as "towards".
As regards writing in general, this is more or less a myth. Both forms are perfectly acceptable in American English, though "toward" is somewhat more common on this side of the Atlantic than on the other.
That said, AP style does mandate "toward" over "towards." This is not because "towards" is wrong as such, but because much of the point of AP style is to make arbitrary decisions for the sake of consistency.
Whether that style ought to be applied equally to columns with a more casual tone, or whether the author's voice can be accorded primacy is a matter of opinion. Personally, I'm on the latter side, though I'll grant that in this case it doesn't matter much either way.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I wish I could instantly gain a inch and half (or five). 5'5" here ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
