5 Minute Grammar Lesson ~ What’s wrong with this picture? #GrammarFail

I have to admit…I love being on the lookout for funny grammar fails and this one cracked me up for a number of reasons.

Can you spot the problem?

See, when my husband and I lived in Japan from 1999-2001, we had super cheap cars. We all did, because Americans were not allowed to bring shiny, new cars with them to Okinawa. It’s a pretty small island and I guess the government officials thought there were enough cars there already? I don’t really remember the rationale, but I do know that it was the beginning of not having car payments. We sold our expensive cars before going there and made an effort to get the cheapest, reliable car we could find. And we have done everything in our power to avoid car payments since because not having a car payment is one of the most awesome things ever.

One of the nine vehicles we owned while we lived there {our quest for reliable was not very successful…} was a Toyota van we lovingly called “The Silver Bullet.” My husband was a maintenance officer in the 67th Fighter Squadron and worked with a lot of F-15 crew chiefs. I’m not sure why he bought their van, but he did. It was spray painted silver and delightfully adorned with black and red spray painted words every so often to make it look like the jets they readied for the pilots. My husband joked that the van was erasable…simply buy another can of spray paint and cover up anything! And we wrote on it for fun. And then erased and wrote something else…

I did my student teaching at an American high school in Okinawa and had to drive that van to and from school. My students laughed mightily at that old thing. It was a tad embarrassing. I wish I had a picture, but when we moved back, the military movers lost an entire crate of our belongings and in it was every picture I took of our time there. And this was before digital days. I was heart broken. I do have the negatives as they were luckily in a different crate, but going through thousands of negatives just never happened.

So when I saw this car, the first thing I thought of was our old Silver Bullet van. And then I saw that error and couldn’t stop laughing. I’m surprised my picture isn’t blurry. My kids thought I needed to go to the hospital. And I was sorely tempted to leave a note and an “eraser,” but I refrained…