Meager beginnings

Let me begin by telling a story. There once was a bright lad. When I say bright, I don’t mean that he glowed. A literal interpretation of the text would clearly indicate that he was purely luminescent, but my intention was to show that he was quick-witted. In other words, his wits came quickly to him. Sure, you could argue that those weren’t actually ‘other words’ (but you would be wrong: notice that in the latter version, I used the adverb ‘quickly’ to modify the verb ‘came’; conversely, in the former, I created the adverb ‘quick-witted’ in order to modify the linking verb ‘was’).

In any case, the lad was not an English student. He spoke English, mind you, but he was neither from England nor a scholar of the English language. If you ask me, which you didn’t but might have if given the opportunity (which you weren’t), he was slightly pedantic with all that he’d learned. For the sake of simple clarification, I don’t use pedantic in the literal sense of “as a pedant.” Though the lad was a scholar, he seemed to enjoy touting his learning to some degree. Perhaps a better description of the lad’s…

Quite frankly, I’m tired of this now.