(FEMALE FOOTSTEPS TOWARDS TABLE)
SS: Hello, I'm Lee-Ann. I'll be your server. Let me first make a few corrections to the menu. The "egg's" benedict with an apostrophe s ---- that is eggs plural, not possessive. An egg does not, to the best of my knowledge, have a benedict. And where it says "Human Noodles," that should be Hunan noodles.
GK: You must be an English Major, aren't you.
SS: "Must be"? I doubt it.
GK: I thought you were. I happen to be an English major too.
SS: (PAUSE) You "happen" to be? Really?---- I mean, it is a fact, it happened, you decided to major in English, but "happen to be" implies an element of chance ---- "I happened to be in the restaurant when the waitress walked over" ---- you see what I mean. And "I am an English major too" could be interpreted to mean that, in addition to majoring in something else, you also majored in English. Do you understand what I'm saying? Is this helpful?
GK: It's helpful insofar as it tells me that you're a tiresome pedant who goes around pointlessly correcting people's English even though their meaning was quite clear----
SS: Excuse me, but "their meaning" ----what is the antecedent here? Is it "people" or is it "English"?
GK: Let me rephrase the sentence then: "You are a tiresome pedant who goes around pointlessly correcting people's English due to an obsessive need to compensate for the fact that you're in a dead-end job in a lousy restaurant and you have a very sharp nose and big watery eyes.
SS: You say "pedant," I say "purist". And "pointlessly" ---- that is not an earned observation.
GK: Nice to meet you.
SS: You're leaving?
GK: I am.
SS: Coward. Go. You'll regret it. You love me and you don't even know it but you will in years to come and you'll try to find me, walking these streets and crying out "Emily!!!! Emily!!!!!!" and you won't ever find me because that's not my name.
GK: When you go to the trouble of learning a language, why not say what you think. A message brought to you by POEM the Professional Organization of English Majors.