Somewhere in my background someone put a “curse” on me. Even though I do not believe in reincarnation, I can’t think of anything in my present lifetime that would cause me to do what I do. I can only believe that someone in my very distant past or in another life must have thought it would be a good joke to look into the future and say, “There is an English teacher. Her name is Pat. I am going to cause her life to be miserable.”

It might be the same person who causes the traffic to start coming down the road any time we decide to pull out on the highway especially if we are trying to leave our driveway. Before we get in the car and roll down to the side of the road, there may not have been but one or two cars to go by for thirty minutes. As soon as we get to the edge of the road and pause to look for traffic, they start. It never ceases to fail that a string of cars begins coming around the curve.

However, what we call the “car curse” is not nearly as bad as what I call the “English curse.” I can do a lot of things, but there aren’t many things that I do exceptionally well. I dabble a little in playing the piano, I sing well enough that I enjoy singing in the car where no one can hear me, I can paint a picture as long as it doesn’t really have to look like something (I can paint a flower but not a rose or a lily), I can build things but not a house, I can decorate cakes but not like the ones on the Food Channel, and I can write a little but not well enough to write a novel. I do some things better than others can, but there are a lot of things others do better than I do.

However, I doubt that anyone catches grammatical mistakes better than I do. Maybe I shouldn’t say “better” than I do, but I doubt that anyone catches the ones I do.

I feel about grammatical mistakes the way Monk (my favorite USA character) feels about everything. They “niggle” at my psyche. They affect me like fingernails on a chalkboard affect other people.

Of course, I don’t catch every mistake or my articles would always be perfect. When a mistake shows up in one of my articles, it is the first thing I see if I look at it in the paper. I read each article several times on the computer trying to catch mistakes, but if I miss one, it “jumps out” and grabs me when it is printed. By then, unfortunately, it can’t be changed.

The mistakes I catch are the ones that probably slip by everyone else. For instance, we were watching television last week and there was a mistake on one of the commercials. There were two subjects and two verbs, and one was right and one was wrong, but it wasn’t noticeable. They only flashed on the screen for a second, but it was long enough for me to “see” the mistake.

Another example was on a sign in New Orleans last week. We were walking down the street, and there was a neat hand written sign outside a small restaurant. I didn’t even read the menu on the sign, but just as I passed by, the only word that caught my eye was “sandwichs.” I almost had to run down the street to keep from erasing it and writing “sandwiches.”

I do not talk to people and catch every grammatical mistake they make. I have learned to tune these mistakes out because I make some of them myself. Talking is informal English. For instance, I would not say to a friend, “For whom did you buy that?” I would be like everyone else and say, “Who did you buy that for?”

Speaking in very formal English can be ignored even in writing and in public speaking. What really bother me are the small, simple mistakes that no one who has ever gone to school should be making.

In our area, one of these mistakes is the use of an apostrophe in plurals. A sign should state, “Put trash in the cans.” It should not proclaim, “Put trash in the can’s,” with an apostrophe in the last word. In this case, the apostrophe means ownership. In order to use the word this way, something would have to belong to the can, and a noun should follow so the sentence will make sense.

My husband calls me the “apostrophe police,” and vows he is going to buy me a black magic marker with a chain and hook it to my purse so I can carry it around and mark out the incorrect apostrophes in the world. I have even seen these mistakes in professionally painted signs.

I normally don’t point out mistakes in hand written signs because I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. After all, the mistake doesn’t really make a difference to anyone who isn’t affected by “the curse.” It doesn’t really affect me, either, except for having to resist the urge to secretly change it. However, sometimes I do point out professionally done signs because someone paid for those mistakes.

Most grammatical mistakes are the result of our use of informal English, but a few of them are just wrong no matter what excuse is given for them. They are taught all the way through school, students are instructed in the correct way to use them, and no one should use them incorrectly. Two of these concern the use of I and me and the use of the past participle of verbs.

Most people use I and me correctly when used alone. For instance, I seldom hear anyone say, “Me going to the store.” However, when one of these words is put with a name, mistakes start, and the sentence might become, “Sally and me went to the store.”

The simple rule is that the same pronoun is used with a name that would be used alone. The word “I” is never used after a preposition such as to, for, after, or behind. A speaker should never say, “They gave the book to him and I,” because “to” is a preposition and I should never be used after it. If “him” is taken out of the sentence, the word “me” would be used.

Also, “me” is never used as a subject of the sentence no matter how many names are used with it. “John, Bob, Bill, Chase, and I went to the movies,” is correct.

The other mistakes involve the past participle of verbs. This sounds hard, but it isn’t. Most of us use these correctly by habit, and we don’t even realize they are past participle of anything. Also, there are only a few verbs that give us trouble. These verbs are come, give, do, and go. The past tenses of these verbs are came, gave, did, and went. When using a past tense of a verb, a person does not use a helping verb such as has, had, been, or was.

It is incorrect to say any of the following: I had came home, I had went to the movies, I had already gave them some money, or I have did my homework.

The past participles of these verbs are come, given, done, and gone, and they always need a helping verb. For instance, it is incorrect to say, “I done that,” or “I come home yesterday.” The correct verbs to use in these sentences would be did (or had done) and came (or had come).

English is a hard language, but it is one we have studied our entire lives. It is taught to school students who don’t always take advantage of the opportunity to learn it. I was one of those people who not only learned it but took to it like a duck does to water. One of my favorite things to do in church when I was young was to make up big long sentences and diagram them. I never had a word that I couldn’t place on that diagram.

Since I have grown up (some people would contest the fact that I have grown up), this ability has followed me into adulthood. I “catch” mistakes in books, in magazines, by public speakers, on television, and on signs. I can ignore the mistakes in informal English because people just don’t talk formally all the time, and words such as lie and lay, sit and set, and rise and raise are hard to use correctly without thinking about them.

However, anyone who is in the public realm should know his or her grammar and use it correctly. Even teachers and preachers and politicians should learn to speak correctly if they are going to present their knowledge to a group of people.

I taught English for a number of years in the public school system, but I learned the grammar I know in high school. There were no grammar classes in college.

Somewhere along the line, I learned one rule that I haven’t been able to find lately. It is rule concerning the use of “to” instead of “and” after a verb in a sentence such as this one: We will try to (not try and) get that for you.

I know this rule exists, but I haven’t been able to find it in black and white yet. When I do, local newscasters better watch out because I will be calling them. They make this mistake often.

The best thing about writing this column today is I know everyone who reads it is going to be able to share, at least a small part of, the curse with me. Each person will now look at every sign with an apostrophe and pay attention as to whether or not it is correct, and those same people will pay attention when a newscaster says “try and” instead of “try to.“