The Difficult Retrieval of Turtles All The Way Down

Note: This is not a review.

I usually buy one book a month, and my October book was Turtles All The Way Down by John Green, but this book had an adventure before I finally recieved it.

I ordered it from Barnes and Noble online, as I always do, and then I went on my way.

A couple days later, my book still had not arrived, and I was wondering what was taking them so long. I was ready to read this book. So then I checked on my order and it said that my book had already arrived. Well, it wasn’t on my porch.

So then, I found out that I had shipped my book to my old house.

I recently moved, and my old home is two hours north of where I live. I also had no way to contact the guy who bought my house and therefore also recieved my book. I couldn’t even remember his name.

So I then called my friend, who works at the same place as the guy who bought my house (in my head, it’s still my house) and my friend then talked to the guy who bought my house. I think it most likely went like this:

Fred: Hey George!

George, ingrossed in his sci-fi video game grumbles a greeting.

Fred: So, George, have you recently recieved a strange package?

George nods incoherently.

Fred: Cool! Can I have it?

George shrugs as if to say, “Sure, why not?”. He isn’t particularly attached to the strange package.

 

*Three weeks later*

I finally got Turtles All The Way Down yesterday!

Grammar: Some Random Thoughts

Grammar is something I’m so-so at. I cannot label all the parts of a sentence and a lot of the finer details fly over my head, but I know enough to get me through writing blog posts without looking like a complete turnip. Although, a lot of my grammar skills come instinctively from reading so much, which probably explains why I can’t do it traditionally by going through millions of rules. (Commence squeaky voice. If this is a verb and that is a subject, then put a semicolon here and here, but not there, because if you put a semicolon there, your will inadvertently blow up the universe.)

But I think that the English language is missing a very important word: a pronoun to go with “person”.

Male is to he

as female is to she

as person is to ?

Often, people will use “their” as the pronoun that goes with “person” to avoid gender bias, but this is technically incorrect because “their” is plural and “person” is not. The correct phrase to use would be “he or she”, but this sounds unnatural and unless you are a very formal person, I doubt you’d use this in everyday language.

Male is to brother

as female is to sister

as person is to sibling

So I am asking you now, dear nonexistent reader, what shall this new word be?