The things They do

They make the rules of grammar, what goes where and when it doesn't. They decided that "I" should come before "e" except when it shouldn't and that, although I may have either one cow or many cows, I always have just sheep. They know the difference between a dash and a hyphen-- in fact They invented them both. They advise us to see their sea over there, exactly that way. They are the reason my teachers are right and I, once more, am wrong.

They are always talking. They say it might rain tomorrow and that the girl who sits behind me in English has a thing for the boy who sits beside me in math. They talked, and decided that classical music will make your baby smart and that soda will rot your child's teeth and that video games will make your teenager dumb. They are undeniably right, at least that is what They tell us to believe.

They wrote the dictionary and the encyclopedias and all of the anonymous quotes that hang unattributed in doctor's waiting rooms. They made blue a boy's color and pink the daintiest of them all. They invented the paper clip and the bouncy ball and the numbered dice and once They had invented them all, they called them knick-knacks. They discovered all of the fruits and decided which ones we would eat and which ones we would grow in our gardens. When we were younger, They did a lot but as we grow older, we find new answers for the things They did.

They have done all that we have not and They have done it namelessly. And, I think, They deserve a round of applause.