Myra's Mother

Yesterday morning I met Myra; after finding out that I was an English teacher, she asked if I corrected my own children's grammar. Yes, I said; me/I subject/object was a big one. She told me how her mother was very tight with her and her siblings' grammar. Was Myra's mother an English teacher? No, she said; the grammar impulse came because Myra was one of eleven children, and her mother did not want anyone to think her children were uneducated because they were so numerous.

Let me tell you; any woman has many children is by no means a careless hick; she is deliberate and gifted, and faced with the de facto social obligation to be better than the normal in order to avoid double criticism: the first, that she is fecund, the other that she is irresponsible.