The Dreadful Story Of Thomasin, A Grammar Pedant (Poetry Form Twenty Nine: Cautionary Tale)

Heavens! I’ve been featured on the NaPoWriMo website. Hello Napowrimoans! *waves*

Cautionary Tales are grisly stories, usually in rhyming couplets of iambic tetrameter, expounding on a major flaw in the main character, and telling, in unpleasant detail, what dreadful fate befell them as a consequence. They are generally darkly humorous, making them popular with children, but have a serious moral message. This one is about me, and is all true except the ending (hopefully).

The chief defect of Thomasin
Was putting all the commas in
To other people’s notes and letters
Insisting she could make them better
Because the person truly hated
To see things badly punctuated
Poor grammar use and careless spelling
Had them swivel-eyed and yelling
They would start up great petitions
Slamming dangling prepositions
And their rage made people stammer
Fearful they’d correct their grammar.
They had known, fresh from the womb
How to distinguish “who” from “whom”
So they’d get angry, and they’d show it
When their peers didn’t know it.
Thomasin was so pedantic
They drove everybody frantic.
But alas, one fateful night
Mx Thomasin beheld a sight
That pained them mightily to see:
A twenty-four hour pharmacy
Which said (and here they had conniptions)
“Were here to help with you’re prescription’s”
Though the hour was very late
Our hero did not hesitate
For they knew no catastrophe
Worse than a rogue apostrophe.
So in they marched, and, feeling strong
Cried out “Your sign’s completely wrong!”
But found, too late, that they had stumbled
On a hold-up, badly bungled.
The mood was tense, the guns were out
And seeing them, the robber shout-
Ed, “You best lay down on the floor
And don’t tell no-one what you saw!”
Said Thomasin “It’s lie, not lay,
And I don’t think you meant to say
“Don’t tell no-one” because that means
You’re asking me to spill the beans.”
The grammar lesson ended there
The gun’s report hangs in the air.
And from our pedant’s temple pours
A final unrestrictive clause.
The moral’s what you all expected:
No-one likes to be corrected.