Green Eggs and Ham: A Fresh Look at a Dark Book

I've been between book edits recently. This can be a productive "down" time if I use it wisely, taking the opportunity to work on the never-ending house projects that seem to be . . . well, never ending. Living in a house built in the 1920s can do that. More often than not, though, I find myself anxious for the next round of edits to begin, whether with a new book or second-round revisions of a current WIP. I would much rather be editing than washing windows or decluttering (as my windows and clutter will attest).

Homeschooling provides me with numerous editing opportunities; the disadvantage to this is that my kids refuse to pay me for my services. Huh. 

In honor of not really having anything new to say, I thought today's blog post could feature my 18-year-old son's most recent English paper . . . kind of like when that Family Circus cartoon guy lets his son, Billy, take over. Without further ado . . .

The Real Green Eggs and Ham

Many consider it to be a normal children’s book, with little purpose other than to entertain with its rhyming, humorous illustrations, et cetera; any deeper meaning that may be found is generally cast aside, or perhaps watered down to a simple moral: “You never know you don’t like something until you’ve tried it.”  This is, of course, not the entire meaning that Seuss intended, and to say so would be an insult to the Doctor’s intentions.  The printed version of Green Eggs and Ham is a very selective telling of a much darker story, of harassment and kidnapping.

In the beginning of the book, a nameless character (assumed to be the protagonist) expresses an extreme dislike for a character named “Sam,” and rightly so, for Sam is notably narcissistic, parading about with a sign which reads, “I Am Sam” and, on the opposite side, “Sam I Am.”

 In the particular incident recorded at the start of the book, Sam has been riding strange animals through the protagonist’s house, waving his signs shamelessly, while the protagonist is minding his own business, attempting to read the morning paper. It is at this point that he expresses his dislike for Sam, and Sam, seeking further attention, inquires as to whether the man enjoys eating green eggs and ham, offering a plate of the stuff.  The protagonist, understandably enough, states that he does not, and refuses the offer. He does not mention a reason for disliking these foods; no doubt he assumed there was no need to do so. I mean, would you eat ham that had sat out long enough to turn green?  And there’s no knowing what was added to the eggs to cause them to be such a color.

Sam, of course, does not accept such a simple answer, and inquires further, asking whether he might enjoy them in a different location. The protagonist explains that the location makes no difference: it is the food to which he objects. Sam, undeterred, continues with his questions, asking if he might like the food better in a house, or perhaps with a mouse. The protagonist explains again that it is not the location, nor the company kept during the meal, but the food itself which puts him off from such a thing.

After this, the story begins to turn dark. Sam asks if the man would eat his food in a box, with a feral canine for company, and the man, not understanding the veiled threat, declines again. It is at this point that Sam abducts the man, throwing him into his car and driving off recklessly, all the while continuing to offer the food. He is quoted as saying, “Eat them! Eat them! Here they are.”

The man continuously begs Sam to let him go and leave him alone, but Sam does not heed his pleas. He drags the man onto a train—no doubt to escape the authorities more quickly—and from the train, to a boat, all the while urging the man to eat the food offered to him. It should also be noted that Sam keeps a live goat in his car, and it may be best not to speculate as to why. Shortly after they board the boat, it goes down—a direct result of Sam’s recklessness—and they are left swimming toward the nearest land mass; yet even while swimming for his life, Sam holds the eggs and rancid ham aloft, telling the insistently refusing man to eat it, because he may like it, if only he would try it.

The man is tired: he has been harassed, threatened, kidnapped and terrorized, and it has been the longest day of his life. He asks Sam if he will be released and left alone if he eats this food which Sam is so obsessively eager to share. Sam tells him that he will let him go if his conditions are met, so the man eats the food and pretends to enjoy it so as not to anger Sam by disliking what is apparently his favorite food. He even goes so far as to thank Sam for putting him through all this. After counseling, the man is able to eat normal ham again; however, he cannot bring himself to try eggs in most forms. 

Sam disappeared shortly after the incident and has not been heard from since.

If I Took MS Word at Its Word...

One of my favorite YouTubers is blimeycow. Jordan and his family are witty, sarcastic, and touch upon so many of my own pet peeves. Spelling creativity on the Internet is one of his big ones—so much so, in fact, that he's dedicated more than one video to the enlightenment of the more 'improvisational spellers' out there. Here's one of my favorites:

MORE Spelling Tips for the Internet

I don't like reading Facebook posts or email from people who can't spell, who use only texting/Internet shorthand, or who can't string together a coherent sentence, for the sole reason that it's distracting and irritating. (OK, that's not a sole reason. Two reasons, then.) I'm not talking about the occasional typo; I'm referring to genuinely awful writing. I find myself wondering if they have any idea how it looks to others,especially when I'm reading things poorly written by homeschooling friends.

Think about it. When we tell people we homeschool, we're telling them a couple of things, whether we've said the words aloud or not. 1. We prefer to teach our children, because we don't think the government schools are going to teach them what we think is important; 2. We're capable of doing a better job of it on our own. The second item is shot down immediately when we can't even express ourselves in print.

Don't get me wrong: I know the value of a good teacher's edition as well as the next person, but in my heart, I feel we should make every effort to not look like a bunch of inarticulate homegrown hicks who never made it through primary school. It's hard enough to dispel the homeschool myths others believe; why hand people more ammo to use against us? Most people who read my written words will never get to know me well enough to discern whether I'm a brilliant science-minded person who has a tough time with spelling, or someone they should actively prevent from voting in the next election. (For the record, I am neither.)

But I digress...

I've been thinking lately that word processing programs may be a teeny tiny bit to blame for the steady decline of good grammar and correct spelling. After all, not everyone texts, so I can't blame phones. Not everyone uses Twitter, so I can't blame the "only 140 characters" rule. However, students everywhere use word processing programs to do their school writing. My children are no exception. Only one of them is a naturally good speller, so I've been able to closely monitor the lack of good advice provided by MS Word as they do their language arts assignments.

I have a confession to make that may surprise some of you: I don't like using spell-check. There are many "real" words that just happen to not be the "correct" words for what I'm trying to say, and spell-check will never catch that. I especially don't like using a grammar program. When I first started using MS Word, I thought it was pretty cool that it not only had a spell-check feature, but also a thesaurus and a grammar-check. Cool, yes, until I actually used it. *shaking my head sorrowfully* So, so, so not cool anymore.

I've come to the conclusion that MS Word's grammar "help" feature was created by someone who knows nothing about grammar and punctuation. In fact, the suggestions are so entirely wrong that I'm beginning to suspect someone out there is having a good laugh at how he or she pulled one over on "The Man" by programming in grammar suggestions/corrections that are the complete opposite of correct. Perhaps the higher-ups at Microsoft don't know any better, but I'll bet their administrative assistants do.

My best guess is the scenario in which the Head Honcho in Charge of Word Processing Programs (yes, yes, I'm sure there is someone out there with exactly that title) attends a diversity seminar and comes home all fired up about hiring a bunch of people from all over the world so he can show he's not a bigot. It just so happens that the person he hires to create MS Word's grammar portion of the program does not speak English as a first, second, or third language. "Not a problem," says Head Honcho. "We'll just have you read through social media sites and learn English by immersion. I'm a genius!"

I have thought this through, and am firmly convinced this is exactly what happened. Why else would Word suggest I change "I'm" to "I are"? Or "it's" to "its" when I'm clearly using a conjunction to say "it is"? Those examples are small potatoes compared to what I've run across while editing a book.

One of these days, I'm going to take every suggestion MS Word puts forth and see what I end up with. Perhaps the next Kindle #1 download?

Back to My Editing Roots

In the interest of clearing out the tiniest bit of clutter in the house, I decided to go through the kids' school stuff to see what I could toss. As a homeschooling family, we have more than our fair share of books . . . and as a homeschooling family, we don't like to get rid of our books.

Oh, sure, the dry textbooks come and go, and as soon as the youngest finishes with them, they are sold or given away. The others, though—the classics, the not-so-classic-but-memorable anyway, the biographies, Newberry winners and the Just Plain Interesting—they're keepers. There are too many good memories associated with the reading of them: long winter days, snuggled up on the couch with hot chocolate; reading the British literature in a badly done British accent; creating character voices; having the kids read to me while I prepared a meal.

One thing I didn't have a problem condensing was the pile of school portfolios. We have the privilege of homeschooling in Pennsylvania, the state with the second-highest number of burdensome regulations for homeschoolers. There are an awful lot of hoops to jump through, but since I've always lived in PA, I just deal with them.

Going through the portfolios, however, I realized how many things I've kept, simply because the school needed them. Not because I wanted them, or because they were meaningful to me or my children. All those items that "needed" to be handed in and evaluated each spring? At least 90% of them were tossed aside as trash without a second look or pang of regret. All the award ribbons and certificates I included as proof that we were, in fact, a well-rounded family whose children weren't cloistered with siblings and parents as their only friends . . . tossed, tossed, tossed. As liberating as it was for me to dispose of it all, it was just as freeing to know that my children don't cling to "things" in order to feel good about themselves. They know they've done these things. They don't need ribbons or trophies to prove they're worth something.

In fact, the most valuable items I found while sorting today were things nobody—I mean nobody!—would give a ribbon for. I found my editing roots in school papers written by my creatively irreverent sons, such as "Ode to a Bread Crumb," a haiku whose final three syllables were filled in by the oh-so-creative "so shut up!" (I guess the creative juices weren't flowing that day), and a research paper that began with the sentence, "The pages of the guitar's history are splattered by the sweat of wandering minstrels who gave their very lives in the effort to bring music across the land."

It's no wonder I have the desire to edit. I've been editing my children's school work for fifteen years running, and I still have five more years to go before the youngest graduates. If I can work with material they give me, I can certainly do justice to the work of those who actually want to write.