What makes people friends? Shared interests, shared histories, shared values, shared experiences – all or any of these, if they are sufficiently intense. My friend Louise Dutt and I were born the same year to very different families. Our paths never crossed until we both went back to college at age 40 – graduate school, that is – and enrolled in Dr. Pattie’s class. We were obviously housewives, escaping to something interesting. We were among the “Retreads,” the bachelor’s degreed women who were serving our culturally derived terms as wives and were now looking to use our education for something beyond our marital contract. We had read Betty Friedan and realized we were not alone. Unlike the undergrads, we never cut class. We were already cutting domestic tasks like ironing or fitting them in between classes.
In that first class we shared, Dr. Pattie frequently held up a book and asked anybody who had read it to hold up his hand. My hand usually went up. I had read voraciously in the 19 years after bachelor’ degree, averaging five books a week. As Louise and I walked away from class, she suggested lunching together. At lunch, she said, “Have you really read all those books?“ and I said I had, and we were friends.
We were enrolled in the same program, planning to be guidance counselors, so we took a lot of classes together. In the process we found that another shared interest was a passion for correct English grammar. Louise was collecting the errors she heard, expecting to write a book about them. The collecting went on. The book never got written, but we continued to share the offenses to each other’s educated ear.
This morning I was listening to the talking heads to whom we will be subjected over the next 16 months leading up to the next election. I heard a particularly otherwise informed pundit say “different than” instead of “different from” and my educated ear reacted.
Oh, did I miss Louise! She and I learned grammar when it was emphasized and stressed by teachers who may have been taught by grammarians like William Strunk, Jr. His 22 simple rules were contained in a slim book titled “The Elements of Style,” privately published by Dr. Strunk and called “the little book,” emphasis on “little.”
My present copy of “The Elements of Style” is the fourth edition, now by Strunk and E.B. White published in 2000. It’s the one I could find after having given the one before it to an aspiring writer. This book is all an entering freshman needs to write an acceptable theme. Of course, he does have to read it – just owning it will not suffice. I’ve been a writer for many years, and when I’m not sure, I reach for the little book.
I expect my educated ear to suffer many assaults in the coming years. And as usual, I will miss Louise, my friend from our first years in graduate school, my colleague for many years, my partner in private practice and in the rarely-found-these-days educated ear. Those are the shared experiences and tastes that develop friendships. cc