Dear Guitar...

Dear Guitar,
Where to begin?! You know how much I love you, and I know you get hungry from time to time, but you really do have to stop eating my guitar picks.
It was easy to get them out of my old guitar, as she was acoustic. But you, being electro-acoustic, have all these confusing wires inside you and sometimes my plectrums get caught up in them, meaning I shall never see them again in my life, unless I shake you to death.
Now, I don’t want to have to shake you to get them out, because I don’t want to break you. You were too expensive for me to treat you that way. Besides, I really don’t want to give you some kind of concussion, as I like the way you sound – Especially your E-Minor.
So next time I’m jamming away to O’Children, please don’t swallow my favourite pick, because I will cry. I did have three. I’m now down to two.
I’d appreciate it if you’d spit it out and let me use it again. You know that’s the only one I can play with.
Another issue I’d like to discuss is the way I treat you. I can’t say sorry enough for the way I leave you lying around against furniture and accidentally whacking you against cabinets and chests of drawers when trying to put you back in your allocated stand, which is next to my rather messy clothes pile. I’m also sorry that I use you as a coat rack for bras, tops, and various other clothing types.
I shall make it up to you one day, I promise.
Love, Tasha
P.S. I’m sorry about the amount of dust you collected in the three days I completely ignored your existence. But I dusted you and apologised, and it will never happen again.
P.P.S. I’m sorry for all the sexual innuendos involved above. And for my rather unclean mind…

The Hammer

So, sometime last year, I was unloading the shopping with my sister in the kitchen. It was going nice and smoothly and quickly, because we had a little system going on between us. It’s too hard for my tiny brain to explain in words, so I shall just get to the point.
All of the bags were unloaded, and everything was put away, except the Nutri-Grain bars. They were still in their box on the counter. So, being the lovely younger sister that I am, I offered to put them away. (Okay, a small white lie there. My sister told me to, and after some protesting, I gave in and set off to do the task in hand…)
I undid the first box fine, and put the Nutri-Grain bars in their allocated tray. But then it came to the second box, and things just went downhill from there. I decided the box would be easier to flatten for recycling if I opened the tabs rather than using the flap the Nutri-Grain folks designed and put there for easier opening.
I felt rather hardcore as I totally ignored the proper way of opening the box and slid my finger under the side tab. I felt the oh-so-familiar pain of getting a paper cut. I gritted my teeth and exhaled loudly. Where the box of doom had broken skin and practically cut open my finger, there was a mixed feeling of stinging and itching.
I hate that. Because you just know if you scratch an itch that’s stinging, it won’t turn out so well.
I decided to be a wimp and put a plaster on it to stem the blood flow and, using my middle finger, tried to undo the flap again.
Then, out of nowhere. SLIT. My middle finger was now in stinging/itching agony – Right on the bend.
Again, I decided to just plaster it up, and continued with the task at hand. I was going to undo the stupid box whether it liked it or not. So, using my left hand this time, I tried to undo the flap. It was going well! I was quarter of the way opening it, halfway, three quarters… SLIT. It got me again.
Now I was angry. This piece of card had now broken me three times, and let’s face it: Paper cuts are small slits of pure evil. And I had three of the stupid things.
After putting yet another plaster on my battle wound, my sister was laughing at me. I’m glad she found it funny because I certainly didn’t at the time.
I disappeared from the kitchen and went into the cupboard beneath the stairs. I took a hammer off of the shelf and went back into the kitchen holding it, looking like I was about to commit murder.
I found the box in the recycling pile. In my short absence, my sister had so nicely undone the box for me. I knew which one it was. It was the one with my DNA all over the edges. I picked it up, and with a hasty, “I’ll be right back,” I unlocked the back door and exited the house.
When I was outside, I placed the box on the floor, and glared at it. Then, raising the hammer to roughly shoulder level, I smacked it down onto the box, then repeated this process several times until it was a mangled wreck of broken card, begging for mercy.
I didn’t give it any mercy.
I carried on for a few more swings until I was sure the neighbours were worrying about my sanity.
Then, feeling much better after attacking the wretched thing, I picked up the remains and walked back in the house, dropping the battered wreck in the recycling pile, and returning to the cupboard to deposit the hammer.
I can honestly say that I’ve never touched a Nutri-Grain bar since.

Dear Microsoft Word…

Dear Microsoft Word,
I’d like to formally introduce myself. My name is Tasha, and for the record, when I got my laptop and you underlined my name with that patronising little red squiggle, it hurt a bit. I know you’re probably used to your luxury life, hanging out inside my laptop, and thinking ‘Awh, poor dear. She doesn’t even know how to spell!’ Well, I most certainly can.
My name is not a spelling error. Yes, my parents decided that giving me a nickname as a first name was a good idea, but I can assure you, that is my name, and I’m rather certain I’ve been spelling it right for my fifteen and a half years of life.
Now, I’m not one to share my last name, but I can assure you that that is not an error, either. Yes, it sounds like a word in the English dictionary, but it is spelt differently. I know you’re not used to this spelling, but it is rather insulting that you think you can spell my name better than me.
Another thing I’d like to discuss is your habit of using your little green squiggle. I will put this in short: My grammar is usually immaculate, thank you. I find your little comments when I right-click on said line, such as ‘Fragment (Consider Revising)’, rather rude.
When you say this, I imagine myself reading a revision guide entitled: Microsoft Word’s Guide to Get Grammar as Perfect as I do, which is rather vain, don’t you think?
So for the record, I apologise for clicking ‘ignore’ when you do this to me, because I really wouldn’t like to revise. I did enough of that last year whilst cramming for my GCSEs. Just so you know, Word – I passed English. So I don’t need your help when writing.
So now, when you correct things that ought not to be corrected, I shall get payback. I find ‘Add to Dictionary’ rather effective, even if the word is an error. I just don’t like being wrong, and it seems neither do you. So we’re both in a losing game, and even though neither of us can win, I will not give up.
You’ve been warned.
Sincerely, Tasha.
P.S. I know the full stop after my name in the previous line is bugging you, which is why I put it there. Haha, Word. Haha.

Hyphens Cause Death

I hate looking back at my grammar in previous conversations. Why, you ask? Because it used to be abysmal. I know I sound like a complete freak in saying so, but I don’t completely care. I’m one of them people that corrects other people’s grammar. For example:
Friend 1 – I’m going shopping after school!
Friend 2 – With who?
Me – WHOM.
Yeah. I can get rather annoying. Take one of my best friends for example. We were asked to write a quick made-up news report for Psychology. The reason for it is irrelevant, but all I do know is that she took dibs on typing.
We hit the first hurdle at the title. We decided to make up the article about a middle-aged man stealing a £83,935 Land Rover. So, when A typed: ‘Man Steals a £83,935 Land Rover!’ In one of them unprofessional looking word-art forms, I simply suggested that an exclamation mark at the end of previous said statement wasn’t completely appropriate for the situation. So, not agreeing with me, A decided to find me proof that they do in fact use exclamation marks in News Headings. She got no such results.
I was right, for once in my life. But, A was determined to prove me wrong, so she carried on in her failing attempt to be right. And she did find at least three, but as I so kindly pointed out, they were all appropriate uses: For example ‘Obama Won!’
Eventually, giving up hope of ever shutting up my whinging, A decided to just delete the exclamation mark, and all was well once again.
After that, it was all going relatively well until horror struck… She missed out an apostrophe. Now, I kindly corrected her mistake, and she fixed it for me. ‘Dont’ really just isn’t the same as ‘Don’t’, okay?
Now, this would have been a rather short and boring story if it had ended there. But oh, no. The sudden turn on ignorant grammar continued. Next, she put hyphens instead of commas in two places. I could feel myself slowly getting all flustered over such a small and simple, yet monstrosity of a mistake, which, if you think about it is rather ridiculous, yes. But to me, it’s normal.
Again, I so kindly corrected the simple, yet abysmal mistake, but no. She replied, “No. It’s meant to be hyphens, not commas.”
So I, now on the verge of explosion, replied to her response with, “No… There are meant to be commas there. If there are hyphens, the whole sentence doesn’t make sense.”
So, out came her Alice in Wonderland book that she’s studying for English, and she found a part in which there were two hyphens instead of commas, and gave me the whole I-just-proved-you-wrong look. But she didn’t. I wasn’t giving up that easily. The hyphens made sense in the book. I politely pointed out that it differs, but she wasn’t having any of it.
I could feel my anger beginning to rise. Why didn’t she just change the hyphens?! I thought I was going to go blind just looking at it. Some may call this an over-reaction, and I guess it was – But if you know me, you’ll know that even the simplest of mistakes completely infuriate me.
I took a deep breath and sat there in an angry silence for a few more seconds, when she missed a full stop at the end of a paragraph. This was getting too much; She was doing it to purposely infuriate me. She was trying to ruin my life.
So, when she was done, I corrected the rest of her mistakes. But she still wouldn’t change the hyphens to commas so, when we handed in our work at the end of the lesson, they were still there, and still are. Now, every time I open my book and see that piece of work, the hyphens are flashing at me like neon signs.
And that is how hyphens caused me to have a complete emotional breakdown in the sixth-form common room.