I write for a living, but I'm no help with English homework

Well, I think Buzz is going to survive -- and even thrive -- in middle school. He was a little muddled by the ideal of changing classes every hour on the hour, and the school he's in is kind of a rabbit warren compared to his old one, but once he conquered the combination lock on his locker -- after two hours of trying -- he decided he could handle it all.

After looking over his first "real" homework of the year, I'm not so sure.

The school system in Tullahoma is set up on an alternative schedule which is why they start back so early. He only gets two months off for summer, but he'll get two-week breaks in October, December and some time in the spring. The idea is that the shorter summer break keeps the kids from "losing" what little bit of info they crammed into their tiny skulls before the last day of school.

Again, after looking at Buzz's first real homework, I'm not so sure.

The first lesson was basically teaching the student how to use the pre-algebra book by asking them to identify different things in it. I thought it was a pretty simple, brain-candy sort of assignment until I overheard him muttering, "What's an index?"

"What's an index?" The kid whipped through the math portion of the homework without a blink, but couldn't remember what the index was.

Then, he flipped to the back of the book to look it up.

In the index.

Heaven help him.

I love it when Buzz has math homework because Terry has to check and I don't. My kids, my accountant, my husband and my banker won't allow me to check Buzz's math homework, and as soon as his teachers figure it out, they won't either.

I hate it when he has English homework, though. You'd think that would be the easiest subject for me when it comes to helping Buzz, considering I majored in English and write for a living. But the fact is, I wouldn't know a pluperfect past participle from a pickled pepper. I just know what sounds right and I operate on Experience & Instinct, not Strunk & White.

Add to that almost 20 years of writing in Associated Press style (more or less), and I can pretty much ruin any kid's grade on a term paper in no time. I remember the first time I turned a story in to an editor after leaving the ivy-covered halls of academic English for the ink-splattered floors of journalism.

"Holy Crud, she's an English major," he complained as he dropped the revised copy on my desk. It had been attacked by hyperactive squids who only produce red ink.

Okay, he was a newspaper editor, so we all know he didn't really say "Holy Crud."

He proceeded to go through and show me that all I'd ever learned in school was wrong, the editor was always right, and every time I put two spaces after a period I cost the company money.

I found a paper I'd written years (Decades? Sheesh) ago in a poem called "Sweeney Among the Nightengales" by T.S, Eliot. The opening paragraph runs something like this:

"In his poem 'Sweeney Among the Nightengales,' American-born poet T.S. Eliot reveals his contempt for the earthly state of man and how apathy prevents the subject from ever rising above that primitive mentality, a theme seen repeatedly in Eliot's work from 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," to 'The Hollow Man' and 'The Wasteland."

Can you tell my senior thesis was on Eliot?

A newspaper article about the poem, not that I can ever imagine writing a newspaper article about the poem, might run more along the lines of:

"Apeneck. Zebra stripes. Maculate giraffe."

In other words-- man is an animal, and not a very nice one at that.

"T.S. Eliot, the man born in America who thought of himself as English, liked to reduce his fellow human beings to the animals he thought they were," said literary scholar Nathan Tipton.

(Nate's an old college friend who really is a literary scholar, so I'm hoping he did say something like that at one time and won't sue me ...)

Of course, I don't even write true to AP most of the time, either. I'm more than aware that I dangle participles like bait over a catfish pond, trying to hook the grammar police so I can tell them to lighten up. I split infinitives like atoms, but with much less spectacular results. I use punctuation like graffiti and if you ever want to shut me up, just take away my long dash -- if you dare.

I (gasp!) use slang, colloquialisms and make the grave and horrific error of writing like I talk.

Properly, I suppose I should say I write in a manner similar to that in which I speak, but I don't speak that similar manner, so there.

AP style or my own personal style, I don't think either one is going to fly when it comes to helping Buzz with his term papers and grammar homework. I'm pretty sure his English teacher isn't going to let me throw in "I'm pretty sure" under any circumstances.

Luckily, he's also got literature sprinkled in with the grammar classes, and there's world history and art and other classes I'm actually interested in and can't wait to help out on. (Have fun with that sentence, grammar police!) The great thing about having kids in school is that you go back to school as well. I've either forgotten about or never learned many of the things they are teaching my children and I'm enjoying their discoveries even as I make my own.