EPIPHANIES AND GLEE

So
right now Mum and Dad are obsessed with a slot on the breakfast show
of BBC Radio 2 called Thought of the Day because
this week it features my brother's new boss, and basically means that
by association, Mum and Dad are famous too.

'He's ever so insightful, you know,' Mama tells me over Skype EVERY.
SINGLE. TIME.

Dad told me, 'We thought of you yesterday, actually. He said that
there are three types of people in the world: add-ers, multiply-ers,
and subtract-ers.'

I nodded. 'Okay...'

'So you either add to a social situation if you are good one-on-one,
multiply it if you make every one in the room feel good, or subtract
if you are a miserable twat.'

Which is actually quite insightful and important to bear in mind, I
agree.

'We think you are a multiplier.'

'I thought I was debilitating?'

'That too.'

'Shall I tell you my thought of the day?' I asked.

'Go on then.'

'Well... You can't always get what you want. But if you try
sometimes, you might just get what you need.'

And then Dad was all, I TOLD YOU THAT ONE! And I was like, ERRRR. NO.
CALUM AND I WERE TALKING ABOUT IT JUST LAST NIGHT. And then Dad said,
YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT WHAT I SAID? And I was like, CALM YOURSELF.
MICK JAGGER SAID IT. Which, long story short, came from me listening
to the Glee soundtrack in my office at work as I got frustrated with
parent-teacher meeting timetables and school reports and holiday
request forms and I took a minute to rest my head on the table to say
to myself I JUST WANT TO WRITE BOOKS ABOUT MY MINGE, HOW DID I GET TO
EVEN BE HERE? And then a cover of 'You Can't Always Get What You Want' came on and I listened to the lyrics and then cried a bit
because FUCK, GLEE. You are totally on the money.

Also: first-world problems. I hate my six-hour-a-day job in Rome.
Uh-huh.

Anyway,
it all came together and I realised
that even though with only 84 days left in this fucking city- and it
isn't the city's fault it sucks, it's my fault, because I quite
simply don't want to be here- the whole concept of I might not have
WANTED this, but I NEEDED this, is absolutely right.

Sat
with an advanced adult student this week, we were working on
structures. And as we discussed why it is sometimes 'which' and not 'what',
'who' and not 'whom', and the differences between 'curb' as a verb and as
a noun, I had to stop her and say: You know how some women
read cook books and get excited? And some men watch sexy films and
get excited? I get excited by sentence structure and language. This
is like porn to me. And then my
student laughed nervously and requested never to have me as her
teacher again.

But
it's totes true. I didn't ever actively WANT to become an English
teacher but turns out I NEEDED to, to fuel my love of the English
language. When do we use a verb followed by the infinitive? Why do we
sometimes follow it with the gerund? WHAT THE FUCK IS
A GERUND? Using the passive voice in the past continuous,
manipulation of the auxiliary verb 'do', mixed conditional sentences
and wait. What? FOUR variations on the future tense?

I did a writing degree and had no idea about any of this.

And
so my new favourite hobby is
making up new variations of grammar rules for myself. For fun. I have
a friend who is bi-lingual and uses 'do' with -ing verbs, as in, 'Can
we do Skyping?' or 'I did tea-drinking this morning,' and I don't
think I would be able to analyse
her language use without the skills this job has given me, and maybe
normal people wouldn't even care but WOAH. I wank off over this kind
of stuff.

In
the same way, I think it is funny to say, 'take a coffee' because
that it the literal translation from Italian, and 'make a shower',
and I ADORE using random Italian words in normal sentences like, for
example, saying, 'Stop being so stronz about it,' which makes no sense in any language because stronz is abbreviation of 'stronza'
which means 'bitch'
AND abbreviating it would be like somebody saying 'Tha'
instead of 'thanks' or
'margha' instead
of 'margherita' and if people
did that for real, then I'd think they were stupid and dumb and not
be their friend.

But
when I
do it, it's okay, because I've written an analysis on the Internet as
to WHY so I win.

And basically, I think I have probably lost you now but hey! If
you're still reading, then kudos to you- you are probably language
geek enough for us to be buddies and so call me. Let's do hanging out
and make some incorrect conjugations together.

We'll
make tanto fun. For serious.