Grandpa and Grammar Meet Again at Brentwood School

My wife and I went out to Brentwood School the other day for Grandparents Day. We have two grandchildren in the school.

It lies in green hills off Sunset Boulevard in Brentwood. I parked by the football field and joined a stream of grandparents heading for the theater arts building. My wife came separately in her car.

Hunter Temple, headmaster, and his wife, Priscilla, community services program director, spoke briefly about the school and its involvement in community service, and three boys talked about their own work in the program.

A brief video showed Brentwood pupils working in a soup kitchen for the homeless. My granddaughter Alison was shown briefly, ladling out food, but I missed her.

A chicken salad luncheon was served in the gymnasium. A jazz group and members of the cast of the school’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof” entertained.

We were joined at the luncheon by Alison and her brother, Casey, and by their maternal grandmother and her husband. Alison said I was invited to her English class after lunch.

My heart thumped. I hadn’t been to an English class since 1934. I doubted that I’d even know what they were talking about. I have long since forgotten the rules of grammar and the names of the parts of speech. I just write by ear.

I don’t mean to suggest that I could write at all if I hadn’t learned the rules in school. Though you may forget them, the rules become a part of your mental machinery, guiding you even though you are not specifically aware of them.

And not remembering the rules can get you in trouble. Caving in to a reader’s complaint, I recently conceded that I had no excuse for writing “is . . . shoes,” in “The latest object to turn up missing is my shoes.” Another reader rebuked me rudely, pointing out that if I had remembered my sixth-grade grammar, I’d have known that the noun object is singular, and requires a singular verb-- is . Of course, as in “The subject is roses.”

The classroom was up four flights of stairs. I was reminded that I was not a schoolboy any more. “Don’t you have an elevator?” I asked my granddaughter. “They keep it locked,” she said. I was consoled by remembering that every step you climb adds a second to your life.

We waited until the teacher arrived and unlocked the door. Her name was Pam Davis. She was brisk and good humored, but definitely in charge. There were 15 pupils; 16 if you count me.

Ms. Davis said, “Well, now, did you do your homework?” There were some mumbled replies and a shuffling of papers. “All right, dig it out.”

Ms. Davis made the rounds of the class, checking homework. Evidently there were no delinquents. The pupils were dressed like stylish teen-agers, that is to say, nondescript. A couple of boys had baseball caps on backward.

The lesson seemed to be concerned with the difference between the gerund and the participle. From my granddaughter’s paper, which I glanced at, she seemed to know one from the other. (I believe that sentence has a dangling participle, but I’m not sure.)

A girl said she had to go to the bathroom. “Of course,” said Ms. Davis. The girl got up and slipped out the door. When she returned a few minutes later, her curls caught in a pencil sharpener that was fastened to the wall near the door, at ear level. She cried out, and Ms. Davis helped extricate her. The incident provided a momentary diversion.

Ms. Davis handed out papers describing the appositive phrase. Actually, I had forgotten what the appositive is, though I use it all the time. She gave a sheet to me, as if I were one of her pupils. (Indeed I was.) The appositive, the paper indicated, makes a sketchy statement clearer. As an example it offered the following: “Sketchy: Ms. Davis is the nicest person on the planet. Clearer: Ms. Davis, my English teacher, is the nicest person on the planet.”

They got the idea. Several pupils gave examples. One of the boys with a cap on backward gave one using Shakespeare. Something like, “Shakespeare, the English poet, wrote ‘Hamlet.’ ” (I couldn’t hear him clearly.)

Instructed to use an appositive to introduce a character from a work read this year by the class, my granddaughter wrote, “Juliet, a beautiful young maiden, got married against her father’s wishes.” (Evidently the class had read “Romeo and Juliet.”)

The pupils were restive, but on the whole well behaved, and evidently interested in their lessons. Ms. Davis moved rapidly from one subject to another. She placed a cassette player on her desk and passed out sheets with lyrics on them.

The music started and Ms. Davis did a little shuffle. I think it was rock. The lyrics began. The pupils were supposed to identify the subordinate clauses, whatever those are.

Ms. Davis, an English teacher, is a humdinger.