Reading Comprehension: Pretty, Funny With No Reel Education
Ordinary Tuesdays
Observations from everyday life. The small moments, familiar places, chance conversations, and ordinary experiences that quietly reveal something larger.
Most people send me positive comments on my essays, or perhaps they’re just kind enough to say nothing. But on rare occasions, I get something snarky. A guy (for the sake of argument, let’s call him Kevin) sent a comment that read: “For an old lady with no reel education that I can see you’re pretty, funny and well red.”
Half of me thinks, “Oh, poor Kevin; are you real or are you a bot living in your parents’ basement? He can’t figure out spell check, but it appears that he can read.” But the other half thinks about the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
Yup, that book. The one from around 2003 by Lynne Truss. Great book. I’m debating sending it to Kev! And I should probably send a thank-you note along with the book, because his one sentence is Ordinary Tuesday gold!
The exquisite part is that while he’s questioning my credentials and acknowledging my literacy, he’s giving me no reel education and well red.
Honestly, I couldn’t have created a more useful idiot. Nor could I keep myself from wandering off to Lynne Truss. Because apparently, correcting Kevin’s spelling wasn’t enough. I started playing with his punctuation, too.
As written:
For an old lady with no reel education that I can see you’re pretty, funny and well red.
But add one tiny comma and his message becomes a speck more clear:
For an old lady with no reel education that I can see, you’re pretty, funny and well red.
But then I started mentally rearranging the whole damned sentence, and suddenly another possibility lurked in there.
For an old lady with no reel education that I can see you’re pretty.
Why, thank you, Kevin! 😂
Of course, I know perfectly well that wasn’t what he intended. And it’s precisely because I’m “well red” that I jumped to Eats, Shoots & Leaves…because Lynne Truss built an entire book around the fact that punctuation isn’t ornamental. The title joke itself is about a panda whose dietary description changes catastrophically with a comma: one version eats shoots and leaves; the other eats, shoots, and leaves.
In fairness, he did communicate successfully. His spelling is atrocious. His punctuation is missing. The sentence is grammatically mangled. And yet I knew almost exactly what he meant.
My brain corrected reel to real. It corrected red to read. It supplied the missing punctuation, rearranged the syntax, and inferred the tone.
All without asking my permission.
That got me wondering how much of what we understand when we read is actually written on the page, and how much we supply ourselves.
Then there’s the timing!
Pretty, Funny With No Reel Education
Most people send me positive comments on my essays, or perhaps they’re just kind enough to say nothing. But on rare occasions, I get something snarky. A guy (for the sake of argument, let’s call him Kevin) sent a comment that read: “For an old lady with no reel education that I can see you’re pretty, funny and well red.”
Half of me thinks, “Oh, poor Kevin; are you real or are you a bot living in your parents’ basement? He can’t figure out spell check, but it appears that he can read.” The other half of my brain thought about the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Yup, that book. The one from around 2003 by Lynne Truss. Great book. I’m debating sending it to Kev! And I should probably send a thank-you note along with the book, because his one sentence is Ordinary Tuesday gold!
“For an old lady with no reel education that I can see you’re pretty, funny and well red.”
The exquisite part is he’s questioning my credentials and acknowledging my literacy with no reel education and well red. Honestly, I couldn’t have created a more useful idiot. Nor could I keep myself from wandering off to Lynne Truss. Because apparently, correcting Kevin’s spelling wasn’t enough. I started playing with his punctuation, too.
As written:
For an old lady with no reel education that I can see you’re pretty, funny and well red.
But add one tiny comma and his message becomes a speck clearer:
For an old lady with no reel education that I can see, you’re pretty, funny and well red.
But then I started mentally rearranging the whole damned sentence, and suddenly another possibility lurked in there.
For an old lady with no reel education that I can see you’re pretty.
Why, thank you, Kevin! 😂
Of course, I know perfectly well that wasn’t what he intended.
Which is precisely what made me stop and think.
And Eats, Shoots & Leaves is exactly the association because Lynne Truss built an entire book around the fact that punctuation isn’t ornamental. The title joke itself is about a panda whose dietary description changes catastrophically with a comma: one version eats shoots and leaves; the other eats, shoots, and leaves.
In fairness, he did communicate successfully. His spelling is atrocious. His punctuation is missing. The sentence is grammatically mangled. And yet I knew almost exactly what he meant.
My brain corrected reel to real. It corrected red to read. It supplied the missing punctuation, rearranged the syntax, and inferred the tone.
All without asking my permission.
That’s fascinating, but so is the timing! Why timing?
Well, that’s because I’ve just been wandering around language, carrying information in an essay about Orwell/Harari and language encoding concepts differently in an essay about the Aymara. Both those essays will come out in a few weeks.
And then bam! In walks Kevin with his delightfully inane comments, inadvertently demonstrating that written language can violate a remarkable number of its formal conventions while remaining intelligible.
Which leaves me with two questions.
How much of what we understand when we read is actually written on the page, and how much do we supply ourselves?
And should I send Kevin a copy of Lynne Truss’s book?
On second thought, considering how much work my brain had to do to read his comment, perhaps I should send myself flowers.
Related Reading
If you enjoy following ordinary observations that turn into bigger questions, you might also like:
- The Story Gets Better Every Time
- Reality Orientation – It’s Thursday, Jerry!
- Matt Damon Went to Mars?
Cynthia Ross Tustin is the founder of I'm Thinking of Retiring, an online publication exploring the psychology, purpose, and everyday realities of life after work. A retired Fire Chief, former ICU and Emergency Room nurse, instructor, and policy writer, she combines lived experience, research, and a lifelong curiosity about human behaviour to write thoughtful essays on retirement, identity, purpose, friendship, and the ordinary moments that quietly reveal something larger. Through her Retirement Field Notes and Ordinary Tuesday series, she encourages readers to approach this next chapter with curiosity rather than certainty.
