The possibilities made my inner nerd tingle with excitement! I created a spreadsheet of all the schools in Vand Co, both public and private, with contact info. Oh! It was (and still is,) a work of art! Mom was thinking about mailing stuff to the schools, and I was like, "Join the 21st Century! We're doing this by email, baby!" Obviously, it was all fun and games until the essays came in and we had to actually read them. Each essay had to be judged by two DAR members and one non-member. Again, between me, Mom and the twins, we had the members down and Mom was able to finagle a couple of her friends into being the non-member judges.
The first year was the 100th anniversary of the National Park System, so the essays were supposed to be a diary of a trip to a National Park. The next year was the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, so they were supposed to imagine it was 1918 and it was the end of the War and such.
Aside from the obvious plagiarism from Wikipedia (they didn't even change the font when they cut/pasted!), and the Nazi's in the essays about WWI, we survived and managed to find "winners" each year. After Mom's two-year term, she was happy to step down. My thoughts were that we had the operation down to a fine art now and it seems a shame not to continue, but there you go.
In May or so, when the new Chapter Regent (like a President) called me and asked me to be the new American History Chair, I must have been having a fit of insanity because I said yes. After all, Mom and I had done very well the previous two years.
No less than three separate women called me, during the next several months, to offer their advice on how to conduct the essay contest. (Note that when Mom took over, NO ONE gave her any guidance - we hoed that row alone!)
AT this point, I have to point out that I am a member of Generation X and one of the personality quirks of Gen X'ers is that, since we were the first generation of latch key kids and had to learn how to fend for ourselves, we do not like people to take it upon themselves to "help" us. I never realized this about myself until I attended a seminar about the different generations and how their personalities differed. When the speaker was describing the Gen X'ers, I was like "Oh my Gosh!, that's ME!" One of the few things about my mother that drives me nuts is that I'll be telling her something and her immediate response is to suggest ways to solve the situation. I don't want help, I just want her to listen to my story. I never knew why, but it always made me angry when she would do that. Now when she does it, I just shake my head and smile at my inner Gen X. But I digress....
One of the ladies who called me even felt compelled to tell me all the things that had been wrong about the contest the previous year. First, one of the speaker's essay was too long... (see each February, the Chapter holds a tea and all of the essay winners are invited to come read their winning essays and get recognized.) Back to the complaint... and was I aware that I could get online and get a list of the rules and there are word count min/max for each grade...? Mom would be so proud of me, I kept my cool (I was at work, mind you) and kindly said that yes, I knew about the requirements and we used the guidelines and any essays that did not have the correct number of words were disqualified, and none of the winning essays were "too long."
Her second complaint was that all of the winners last year were home-schooled. She went on to point out that the essay was meant to encourage public school students... not that homeschoolers weren't welcome to participate. She could provide me with a list of all the schools in the County if I would like.... I respectfully advised her that every school in the County, public, private, parochial, etc, received the same invitation to participate as the homeschoolers received. I withheld the fact that only one school sent in any essays and that they were all... sub-par.
The final comment was that she knew someone who knew a teacher at Evansville Day School and she really felt like they'd want to participate, so she would get me a name of the teacher. Again, I respectfully advised that EVERY school in the County had received an invite, and that even though Evansville Day School had already received the information, if she wanted to provide me with an email address, I would send it to that teacher as well.
Somewhere in all of this, the woman also told me that she had been in charge of the AH essay contest in the past, and there was always very good participation by the schools. I'm not sure what she expected me to do, go to each school and force the children to write essays? I'm pretty sure that the fear of upsetting Mom was the only thing preventing me from telling the old crone that if she got such good participation, maybe she should the job take over.
Now, here we are, the essays are in, and out of the whopping 42 schools invited, I received essays from three, let me say that again... THREE schools.
Now, in case you're wondering about the title of this post, here's where that comes in...
For three years now, each time I read these essays, I am continually aghast at the ....grrr... are these children not taught about punctuation? Capitalization? GRAMMAR? I've always been a proponent of the Oxford comma, but am used to the wide-spread failure for it to be used properly. And I'm not perfect. I'm pretty sure that if Mrs. Hunt or Mrs. Hewig (high school English - good ol' NPHS!) were to read any of my posts here, they would be equally horrified. 
But I'm talking no punctuation at all! And the run-on sentences. On the bright side, nary a Nazi has been found in any of the essays I've read, so far. Oh, you'd probably like to know the topic - it's the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. So the essays are supposed to be about the pros and cons of the women's suffrage movement.I think as a essay topic, it's a good one. There have been some very interesting and original essays. One of the major problems is that very few of the essays have ANY pros or cons. Also, a lot of the kids seem to mistake "suffrage" for "suffering" and the authors comment that "the passage of the 19th Amendment and the subsequent end to women's suffrage was a good thing!"*
*NOTE: Obviously this comment is in my words because had most of these written it, Amendment would not have been capitalized and it would have likely read "woman's suffrage" and not "women's suffrage."
This past Friday evening, I lured a few of my friends over to the 'do for pizza, cookies, and spicy pretzels (note my use of the Oxford comma, there) in exchange for their reading/judging essays. The essays are definitely a case of having to laugh or else having to cry. I think a good time was had by all of my vict... er.. judges; and I hope they might be willing to come back next year, after all, this is a two-year term. Sigh.And now, for a couple of grammar-related comics that make me chuckle.
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