Meditative Parts of Speech

I used to diagram sentences for fun. I did it for hours. From the age of ten to thirteen, it was something that pleased my brain in a way that little else ever did. That adolescent time is so awful, so awkward and ungainly, but sentences: they always made sense. Even the longest ones could be stripped down to their most essential parts, identified, categorized, labeled, and pinned like parts of a butterfly.

I filled whole notebooks with diagrammed sentences. While other girls drew horses or scribbled their first names next to various boys' last names, I separated subjects from predicates, adverbs from adjectives, hanging them from precarious-looking lines and rewrote them entirely if I ran out of room on the page.

It made me pretty popular, I can tell you that. Between the knitting, the glasses, the braces, the acne, and the tendency to obsess over parts of speech, I was a preteen CATCH. And now, looking back, I don't think I even possess the skill anymore. I'd have to brush up on the rules before I broke out the old diagramming pen. Much like my mad spirograph skillz, my diagramming abilities are rusty.

But just thinking of those notebooks, filled with words (it didn't matter what kind of words -- I was home schooled during part of those years, and I remember diagramming Latin sentences, too), calms my heart rate. It was a meditation of sorts, and I didn't know it.

I just did it because I loved it.

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