On moles and mules

This morning, Jonathon caught a mole. He spied it in the bushes and scooped it up with his toy bucket. Then, as he was running around saying the word 'mole' over and over again, it reminded me of a humorous event when I was in high school, only this anecdote involved the use of the word 'mule'.

It was English class, my senior year, with Mr. D, who, for the record, is one of the top three teachers I have ever had (as Richard H. could attest, having also been under his tutelage). The lesson for the day was the complete parsing of verbs. To 'parse' a verb, as I recall it, is to identify all of its different forms for tense, person, etc.

To wit, if the verb is 'run', then the simple present-tense parse would be:

• I run
• You (singular) run
• He runs
• We run
• You (plural) run
• They run

Then you modify the form to make it past perfect, past progressive, and so forth for the forty or so other tense forms. So, Mr. D called upon one of my friends, Matt, to write a sentence on the chalkboard that the class would spend the remainder of the period parsing. So what does he write?

Brandon is a mule.

And Mr. D was okay with this, except he did allow me to choose the sentence that Matt would parse the next day (I will discombobulate you.). On about 45 minutes later, and the class is working on the most advanced tense (The Singular Past Perfect Progressive Future Indicative Participle Gerund Code Red: Brandon had been thinking about becoming a mule at some future point during his past life.), and my name is plastered all over both chalkboards, and everyone's notes for the day, I was feeling a little self-conscious.

But thank goodness for a decade or so of space which allows us to laugh about such things. :-)