Introduction:
From a dark closet in Saint Paul, Minnesota, this is “Don’t Remember Me Like This.” I’m Nathaniel Barber. Don’t Remember Me Like This is a homemade, nonfiction podcast. As a warning for listeners, this episode mentions suicide in fairly inelegant terms.
It's been a busy couple of weeks here in Minnesota. My daughter's Girl Scout cookie drive is in full swing. If you'd like to support a super organization like the Girl Scouts, I'll include a link to her cookie drive in the show notes. My favorite cookies are all of them so, do me a big favor and help get all these delicious delicious cookies out of my house.
I also recently was laid off from my job. There's a lot to unpack from this sudden change, that'll have to wait for a later date. In the meantime, it's not a moment too soon I get back to polishing my portfolio, building out my LinkedIn profile and showering the internet with applications.
We had quite the blizzard last week though, not nearly the dump that hit the Sierra Nevadas. I wrote about the snow and a visit from the neighborhood junker in the most recent members-only episode of Don't Remember Me Like This, titled The Blizzard. You can listen to The Blizzard from my Patreon account. Just a reminder, aside from all the hot gifts and cool prizes you get with your membership on Patreon, your generous support helps me to produce and advertise this podcast. Thank you so much for your support. You're doing the Lord's work!
And of course, this week, Tennessee just banned drag queens from performing in public, supposedly under the pretense of protecting our children from pedophiles and groomers or some nonsense like that.
As reported on NPR: "Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed a bill banning drag shows in public spaces, a measure that will likely force drag shows underground in Tennessee. Other states across the country are proposing similar legislation.
Lee gave his signature just hours after the measure passed in the Senate Thursday afternoon. In the same sitting, Lee signed a ban on gender-affirming health care for youth in the state.
The announcement comes as a yearbook photo of the Republican governor in drag recently surfaced on Reddit."
The ban on drag performances in Tennessee is one of several bills that’s part of a larger wave of supposedly "values based" legislation that seems to be sweeping across the nation these days. Conservatives are having a moment in the sun. Although if you ask anyone from the love-it-or-leave-it crowd, they're all saying the country has never been in worse shape.
Despite numerous small victories at the state level with the passing of far-right culture-war bills and the overturning of certain Supreme Court precedents, it seems that these individual successes may be adding up to a larger defeat in the ongoing war for the soul of our country.
The Tennessee drag bill, like other similar bills, is noteworthy for its potential to create the perfect conditions for the Streisand effect. Keen listeners of this podcast may remember in one of the first episodes titled "Dancing Lessons From God," I discussed the Streisand Effect, referencing this excerpt from it's page on Wikipedia: “Once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, they are significantly more motivated to access and spread that information.”
Conservative whites and evangelicals say they are losing their place in America. They feel like their access is slipping, their influence is vanishing, their control on culture is going poof. They keep saying things like, they can't even recognize America anymore. The America they knew and loved is now gone. They're feeling betrayed by their own children, who are likely to be more accepting and open than they are.
To varying degrees, these are all tenants of "the replacement theory.” I did some digging on the replacement theory this week and found it’s more commonly referred to as the "great replacement" or "white genocide" theory. It is a far-right conspiracy theory that suggests white people are being deliberately replaced by non-white people through mass migration, low birth rates, and other means. According to this theory, there is a deliberate plot to undermine and eradicate white culture and civilization, and to establish a new order dominated by non-white people. The replacement theory has been widely criticized as a racist, xenophobic, and baseless idea that is used to promote hate and division.
I first heard of the replacement theory in 2017 when all those boys with Tiki garden torches stormed the campus of the University of Virginia chanting, well…you probably remember these guys...A funny anecdote about one of the guys in that rally, Teddy Joseph Von Nukem who was famously photographed shouting his head off at the forefront of that sad parade recently actually blew his head off last month, on January 30th. According to a report from the Texas County Coroner's Office in Missouri Von Nukem shot himself in the head the same day he was scheduled to be in court in Arizona, facing four counts relating to illegal import and sale of fentanyl from Mexico.
So, I guess, chalk one up for suicide?
To fight this great replacement, we're seeing all this weird legislation politicians are cooking up in this perceived culture war against liberalism and progressivism. In doing so, they're only bringing attention to issues that normally might have slipped under the radar.
Here we got all this panic around wokeism, to banning African studies in Floridian classrooms, to overturning Roe, to banning books, banning drag, banning trans kids from sports, banning critical race theory and on and on, with every ban, conservatives seem to be Streisanding their way into a paradox—what you prohibit becomes what you promote.
What previously may have been ho-hum—I mean, drag is anything but ho-hum, but it has been around since, like forever—now, thanks to the ban on drag performances in Tennessee, drag suddenly has an added pizzazz.
Before the ban on public drag shows, American children might have grown up as they always have, which is probably caring more about their friends and their relationships than noticing drag queens. However now the children of Tennessee are about to grow up in a state that is feverishly fixating on drag queens, whether they are explicitly prohibited, unallowed, unaccepted, bad, wrong, opposite, not good, you get the point. Good, bad, any way you slice it, there's about to be a whole lotta drag up in these kids' lives.
And that is deliciously ironic.
The children of Tennessee might eventually begin to wonder what it is about drag that's got their parents in such a tizzy? Or, what is it about critical race theory that is so unspeakably awful? Or, why can't trans kids play sports? Or why can't trans kids even be trans? Why?
That’s one thing about kids—they usually grow up. A big part of growing up is to demarcate and individualize oneself from one's parents. As adolescents, when they start looking for ways to come into their own, some of the lowest hanging fruit is to differentiate themselves from their family. Or, more specifically, rebelling against what their parents hold most dear.
So, whatever you might think about the wave of conservatism lately, it is worth considering the longevity of these bills and legislation. It remains to be seen if the prohibitions of such "morals-based" legislation will influence future generations in the ways their authors are hoping. More likely, I imagine these restrictions will backfire, creating an opposing reaction among young people. It is possible that the very act of denying them certain freedoms will be the one thing that plants the seeds of rebellion which may sprout later in life.
After reading the news all day, most often I just want to watch tv with my mouth open and try not to think about anything.
These days we're living from Sunday to Sunday waiting for episodes of The Last of Us to drop. Recently we devoured Only Murders In The Building which was a FABULOUS show—highly recommended! Also, we watched The Vow, which is also highly recommended, especially if you like ultra-cringey mini-series on fucked up sex cults and sociopathic cult leaders. Good Christ, I barely made it through The Vow. And it's not because I don't have the stomach. I got stomach in spades. Honestly, I love horror movies, and even slasher films. I could watch people get eaten alive by aliens and dismembered by night creepers all the livelong day. I mean, there's gotta be a good plot though. Gore for gore's sake, that's just, ew.
But The Vow, goddamn. It's not even horror, it's a documentary on a self-help movement that went off the rails into a grotesque sex cult, and I could barely make it through the series. So, if you feel like destroying your life for a couple weeks, check out The Vow. Just, ungh. Too much.
Ok, enough about current events.
This week I’m reading a story about something that's probably the polar opposite of the great replacement theory, slasher films, and sex cults: punctuation.
Who says you can’t teach an old writer new tricks? With age and a reduced metabolism that’s made me increasingly averse to unnecessary arguments, I’ve finally come to terms with my old nemesis: the Oxford comma. But something funny happened along the way, my shift in perspective about the Oxford Comma helped me to realize I’ve been going about this whole life thing wrong.
So, here it is, enjoy The Oxford Comma.
The Oxford Comma
Several years ago, I paid for a stall at the Portland Night Market’s special holiday weekend thing. The Night Market’s holiday thing falls sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas—a special time of year, marked by compromised frugality and gift-giving desperation, when trinkets and knick knacks become suddenly valuable. I predicted the holiday night market would be a good opportunity to sell my book and give away some complimentary postcards to holiday shoppers shopping for a special someone (or enemy) who could use a gift that wasn’t homemade soap, or crocheted socks, or stinky candles, or homemade soap.
The holiday night market was a madhouse, a frenzied crush of people—the kind of pre-apocalyptic gathering that, after COVID, and long after the height of the pandemic has passed—seems dizzyingly foolish and wonderful. The shoppers were all giddy on endless samples of chocolates, craft cheeses, salsas, beer and wine and liquor. Occasionally, someone from the meandering throngs would peel off and wander over to my stall wedged between an array of artisan butters (with samples) and another booth of artisan liquors (also with generous samples).
Just for occasions like this I had prepared a snappy elevator pitch about the book: “Luck Favors The Prepared is a collection of non-fiction short stories that are funny and not funny about life, death, and customer service.”
For the most part, those who weren’t interested in the book would turn it in their hands to feel it’s heft, as if to gauge the worth of the writing inside by the weight of the book. They might politely demure with something like “Interesting, thank you.” while easing back and away from my booth – as one would politely back away from the unlucky sampler at Costco who was given the unenviable task of demonstrating detergent or glass cleaner. But the curious ones who weren’t scared away by a book stayed and thumbed through the pages to read a sample and make small talk.
And wouldn’t you know it, I even sold some books!
Hocking the book at the Night Market afforded a unique opportunity to watch people skim the pages in real time. Most everyone did what I do and went straight for the first line, which was “I didn’t even want the job.” Curiously, others skipped to the back, to the author bio. And I could always tell when they clapped eyes on the part about Oxford commas:
It said, "Nathaniel does not use Oxford commas."
Their expressions would change. Those who were amused were much more likely to buy the book. Those who were not, winced, and shut the book and hurried away. It was about a 50/50 split.
One older gentleman looked up from the book and seemed genuinely shocked, he said, “You don’t use Oxford commas?!”
I responded, “You’re welcome!”
He said, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I laughed, thinking he was joking, until I realized he was dead serious.
I asked, “I beg your pardon?”
The man shook his head cartoonishly and put down the book, mumbling under his breath about kids these days. He was still shaking his head when he walked away. I watched him walk over to a lady who was trying samples of hot sauces. He said something to her, and poked his thumb in my direction. She looked over at me. I waved. The man whispered something into her ear. She looked horrified—as if he’d just stuck his tongue in her ear.
The two of them stayed there, sampling their samples, and squinching their faces at me.
I thought, really now.
For a brief refresh, an Oxford comma (or, the serial comma) is an unusual comma with an unusual job. You can find it at the end of a sentence containing multiple subjects or a list of items. The Oxford comma is used to separate the penultimate item from the very last item. The casual tendency is to finish a sentence with an “and” separating the last two subjects. Because that is how we talk. But there is a very vocal demographic that believes this is incorrect since an “and” joins together those last two items while the Oxford comma keeps them separate.
I love commas. But until recently I believed the presence of an Oxford comma indicated sloppiness, an overly prescriptive eagerness to dispense a comma willy-nilly, with little regard to its true usefulness. For me, the Oxford comma cheapened the basic comma. I would have even described the Oxford comma as a kind of anti-comma since I love a basic comma for its ability to add a pause or a break—and, by proxy, a conversational aire to a sentence—while the Oxford comma made a sentence overly structured and turned the cadence stilted and clunky. To garnish a sentence with the Oxford was to cater to the sentence’s structure, rather than how it reads.
Notice the absence of the Oxford comma between “shipment” and “or” in this sentence: “Overtime rules do not apply to the canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of agricultural produce; meat and fish products; and perishable foods.”
That infamous sentence landed a Maine shipping company in hot water legally. Here, the absence of an Oxford comma inspired a class action lawsuit brought by truck drivers who claimed they were denied thousands of dollars in overtime pay. The drivers argued the absent punctuation between “shipment” and “or” lumped them with the box-packers. The delivery drivers—who don’t pack boxes, and who were supposedly expected to work overtime to make their rounds—took exception to this inclusion.
I agree with the delivery drivers on this one. Though, not because of the supposed sloppy punctuation of their HR department. But because all workers who work overtime should be paid overtime wages. Obviously.
That sentence sure was whopper, but its message was clear enough without the Oxford comma: NOBODY at this company gets paid overtime.
Here, the Oxford wants to take a regular, perfectly understandable sentence and impose on it silly and unnecessary rules. And while I can’t speak for the people involved in this specific case, I have found Oxford-correctors to be a particularly obnoxious breed of sanctimonious grammar grandstanders, wagging fingers at everybody in the room like the political vegan some monster invited to your Thanksgiving dinner.
You might hear a diehard Oxfordian say something like “Without an Oxford comma, this is that, and that is this and you can’t have this if you don’t have that.” And so on. Rules! Rules! Rules!
For fear of looking like a dolt, or to sensibly avoid unnecessarily tangling with a grammar nazi, most everyone will agree with the Oxford bully and back away into the bushes.
This is where my grudge with the Oxford comma began, in college probably, since college is where I encountered the most concentrated community of unproven English majors. Likely, it was in one of our insufferable peer editing groups where some contrarian fedora-wearing Chauncy was only too willing to point out the erroneous punctuation in my copy. I can picture it now, with much fanfare, so-and-so announced that not only could I “show more, and tell less” in my writing, but I chronically omitted Oxford commas in what seemed to be a habitually sociopathic tendency to misled my readers with improper punctuation.
That pretty much sums up college.
College is where I learned the Oxford comma is essentially the middle-manager of punctuations—a nobody with an inferiority complex who would happily impose itself on an otherwise functional system and muck-up the gears for its own self-affirming gratification.
Obnoxious Oxfordians aside, I commend whomever noticed the omitted Oxford comma in The Case of the Underpaid Delivery Drivers for two reasons:
In the absence of the Oxford comma, they saw their shot for an overdue payday, and they went for it. Good for them! I salute their resourcefulness and creativity. Secondly, when they hitched the crux of their case to the Oxford they took what would otherwise have been a humdrum procedural over unpaid wages and made it go viral bringing much more attention to their case than a class action lawsuit over grammar might normally solicit.
If arguing the Oxford was a boon for their case, it was also a boon for my grudge against the punctuation since therein was unwittingly created the most delicious articulation to how much a killjoy this bratty little dot can be: only an argument for the Oxford could fly in court. Only a lawyer could defend a place in this world for a punctuation whose singular job is to be a wet blanket. To perpetuate needless rules and fussiness—structure for structure’s sake. To champion the Oxford is to coddle the binary reader who cares more for rules than for content.
I’ve always admired writers whose prose meets a reader only half way. Writers who will lead a reader up to a certain point and then let go, explaining only the bare minimum and allowing the reader to take it the rest of the way. The reader fills in the blank spaces with their imagination and populates what isn’t or what is said with their own expectations and suspicions.
In this give-and-take, the reader is an invested participant in the text—the perfect conditions in which an omitted Oxford comma, be it the purview of the writer—might go blithely unnoticed. I mean, I’m not saying the instruction manual for your car should read like T. S. Eliot. But there can be a balance. There can be a time and place for the Oxford comma. Sometimes it’s okay to cater to structure, especially when the structure helps to clarify the content
As noted, my prohibition of the Oxford comma originated from a lasting loathe of self-righteous nitpickers and a distaste for accommodating the reader. That has not changed. But after time, and after too many pointless (and surprisingly vitriolic) arguments, eventually I tempered my campaign to eradicate this futile punctuation. With age, and a plummeting wherewithal to give a damn, I realized that boycotting the Oxford comma was probably childish and a huge waste of time and probably invited more meaningless arguments than if I’d just left the subject alone.
Eventually I realized that, ironically, my strict disallowance for a supposed over-adherence to rules and structure, had made me excessively rigid in my adherence to a rule. I’d turned myself into an inflexible writer who believes there is only one way to do the thing.
To further my begrudged acceptance of the Oxford comma, the years I’ve spent in marketing have demonstrated—like the universally loathed Microsoft Word—most, if not all my clients traffic in the Serial comma. If I want to do my copywriting in peace and harmony, I am compelled to use the Oxford comma and, god help me, Microsoft Word.
Outro
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Don’t Remember Me Like This.
All episodes are written, produced, and performed by me. If you’d like to learn more about me and my work, you can enjoy more pages of my website, including my lengthy galleries of photography or pick up a copy of the book I mentioned in this episode, Luck Favors the Prepared.
I highly recommend supporting this podcast, which can be as easy as telling a friend or an enemy about Don’t Remember Me Like This, and giving it the thumbs up wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also join our super exclusive booster club over at Patreon where you can find me by searching Nathaniel Barber. You can choose between three immensely helpful monthly contributions that come with access to exclusive content, gifts and prizes for your generosity. For February, I just published a members-only episode on Minnesota’s recent blizzard and my recent unemployment. You won’t be able to listen to that little gem anywhere else.
Additionally, we’ve got a merch store up and running! Where you can pick up shirts, mugs, and stickers. I just picked up Don’t Remember Me Like This t-shirts for Jaclyn and me and we are both very satisfied with our purchase.
As always, thank you for listening, and thank you so much for your generous support, it helps keep this podcast going. Until next time, please, don’t remember me like this.
From a dark closet in Saint Paul, Minnesota, this is “Don’t Remember Me Like This.” I’m Nathaniel Barber. Don’t Remember Me Like This is a homemade, nonfiction podcast. As a warning for listeners, this episode mentions suicide in fairly inelegant terms.
It's been a busy couple of weeks here in Minnesota. My daughter's Girl Scout cookie drive is in full swing. If you'd like to support a super organization like the Girl Scouts, I'll include a link to her cookie drive in the show notes. My favorite cookies are all of them so, do me a big favor and help get all these delicious delicious cookies out of my house.
I also recently was laid off from my job. There's a lot to unpack from this sudden change, that'll have to wait for a later date. In the meantime, it's not a moment too soon I get back to polishing my portfolio, building out my LinkedIn profile and showering the internet with applications.
We had quite the blizzard last week though, not nearly the dump that hit the Sierra Nevadas. I wrote about the snow and a visit from the neighborhood junker in the most recent members-only episode of Don't Remember Me Like This, titled The Blizzard. You can listen to The Blizzard from my Patreon account. Just a reminder, aside from all the hot gifts and cool prizes you get with your membership on Patreon, your generous support helps me to produce and advertise this podcast. Thank you so much for your support. You're doing the Lord's work!
And of course, this week, Tennessee just banned drag queens from performing in public, supposedly under the pretense of protecting our children from pedophiles and groomers or some nonsense like that.
As reported on NPR: "Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed a bill banning drag shows in public spaces, a measure that will likely force drag shows underground in Tennessee. Other states across the country are proposing similar legislation.
Lee gave his signature just hours after the measure passed in the Senate Thursday afternoon. In the same sitting, Lee signed a ban on gender-affirming health care for youth in the state.
The announcement comes as a yearbook photo of the Republican governor in drag recently surfaced on Reddit."
The ban on drag performances in Tennessee is one of several bills that’s part of a larger wave of supposedly "values based" legislation that seems to be sweeping across the nation these days. Conservatives are having a moment in the sun. Although if you ask anyone from the love-it-or-leave-it crowd, they're all saying the country has never been in worse shape.
Despite numerous small victories at the state level with the passing of far-right culture-war bills and the overturning of certain Supreme Court precedents, it seems that these individual successes may be adding up to a larger defeat in the ongoing war for the soul of our country.
The Tennessee drag bill, like other similar bills, is noteworthy for its potential to create the perfect conditions for the Streisand effect. Keen listeners of this podcast may remember in one of the first episodes titled "Dancing Lessons From God," I discussed the Streisand Effect, referencing this excerpt from it's page on Wikipedia: “Once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, they are significantly more motivated to access and spread that information.”
Conservative whites and evangelicals say they are losing their place in America. They feel like their access is slipping, their influence is vanishing, their control on culture is going poof. They keep saying things like, they can't even recognize America anymore. The America they knew and loved is now gone. They're feeling betrayed by their own children, who are likely to be more accepting and open than they are.
To varying degrees, these are all tenants of "the replacement theory.” I did some digging on the replacement theory this week and found it’s more commonly referred to as the "great replacement" or "white genocide" theory. It is a far-right conspiracy theory that suggests white people are being deliberately replaced by non-white people through mass migration, low birth rates, and other means. According to this theory, there is a deliberate plot to undermine and eradicate white culture and civilization, and to establish a new order dominated by non-white people. The replacement theory has been widely criticized as a racist, xenophobic, and baseless idea that is used to promote hate and division.
I first heard of the replacement theory in 2017 when all those boys with Tiki garden torches stormed the campus of the University of Virginia chanting, well…you probably remember these guys...A funny anecdote about one of the guys in that rally, Teddy Joseph Von Nukem who was famously photographed shouting his head off at the forefront of that sad parade recently actually blew his head off last month, on January 30th. According to a report from the Texas County Coroner's Office in Missouri Von Nukem shot himself in the head the same day he was scheduled to be in court in Arizona, facing four counts relating to illegal import and sale of fentanyl from Mexico.
So, I guess, chalk one up for suicide?
To fight this great replacement, we're seeing all this weird legislation politicians are cooking up in this perceived culture war against liberalism and progressivism. In doing so, they're only bringing attention to issues that normally might have slipped under the radar.
Here we got all this panic around wokeism, to banning African studies in Floridian classrooms, to overturning Roe, to banning books, banning drag, banning trans kids from sports, banning critical race theory and on and on, with every ban, conservatives seem to be Streisanding their way into a paradox—what you prohibit becomes what you promote.
What previously may have been ho-hum—I mean, drag is anything but ho-hum, but it has been around since, like forever—now, thanks to the ban on drag performances in Tennessee, drag suddenly has an added pizzazz.
Before the ban on public drag shows, American children might have grown up as they always have, which is probably caring more about their friends and their relationships than noticing drag queens. However now the children of Tennessee are about to grow up in a state that is feverishly fixating on drag queens, whether they are explicitly prohibited, unallowed, unaccepted, bad, wrong, opposite, not good, you get the point. Good, bad, any way you slice it, there's about to be a whole lotta drag up in these kids' lives.
And that is deliciously ironic.
The children of Tennessee might eventually begin to wonder what it is about drag that's got their parents in such a tizzy? Or, what is it about critical race theory that is so unspeakably awful? Or, why can't trans kids play sports? Or why can't trans kids even be trans? Why?
That’s one thing about kids—they usually grow up. A big part of growing up is to demarcate and individualize oneself from one's parents. As adolescents, when they start looking for ways to come into their own, some of the lowest hanging fruit is to differentiate themselves from their family. Or, more specifically, rebelling against what their parents hold most dear.
So, whatever you might think about the wave of conservatism lately, it is worth considering the longevity of these bills and legislation. It remains to be seen if the prohibitions of such "morals-based" legislation will influence future generations in the ways their authors are hoping. More likely, I imagine these restrictions will backfire, creating an opposing reaction among young people. It is possible that the very act of denying them certain freedoms will be the one thing that plants the seeds of rebellion which may sprout later in life.
After reading the news all day, most often I just want to watch tv with my mouth open and try not to think about anything.
These days we're living from Sunday to Sunday waiting for episodes of The Last of Us to drop. Recently we devoured Only Murders In The Building which was a FABULOUS show—highly recommended! Also, we watched The Vow, which is also highly recommended, especially if you like ultra-cringey mini-series on fucked up sex cults and sociopathic cult leaders. Good Christ, I barely made it through The Vow. And it's not because I don't have the stomach. I got stomach in spades. Honestly, I love horror movies, and even slasher films. I could watch people get eaten alive by aliens and dismembered by night creepers all the livelong day. I mean, there's gotta be a good plot though. Gore for gore's sake, that's just, ew.
But The Vow, goddamn. It's not even horror, it's a documentary on a self-help movement that went off the rails into a grotesque sex cult, and I could barely make it through the series. So, if you feel like destroying your life for a couple weeks, check out The Vow. Just, ungh. Too much.
Ok, enough about current events.
This week I’m reading a story about something that's probably the polar opposite of the great replacement theory, slasher films, and sex cults: punctuation.
Who says you can’t teach an old writer new tricks? With age and a reduced metabolism that’s made me increasingly averse to unnecessary arguments, I’ve finally come to terms with my old nemesis: the Oxford comma. But something funny happened along the way, my shift in perspective about the Oxford Comma helped me to realize I’ve been going about this whole life thing wrong.
So, here it is, enjoy The Oxford Comma.
The Oxford Comma
Several years ago, I paid for a stall at the Portland Night Market’s special holiday weekend thing. The Night Market’s holiday thing falls sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas—a special time of year, marked by compromised frugality and gift-giving desperation, when trinkets and knick knacks become suddenly valuable. I predicted the holiday night market would be a good opportunity to sell my book and give away some complimentary postcards to holiday shoppers shopping for a special someone (or enemy) who could use a gift that wasn’t homemade soap, or crocheted socks, or stinky candles, or homemade soap.
The holiday night market was a madhouse, a frenzied crush of people—the kind of pre-apocalyptic gathering that, after COVID, and long after the height of the pandemic has passed—seems dizzyingly foolish and wonderful. The shoppers were all giddy on endless samples of chocolates, craft cheeses, salsas, beer and wine and liquor. Occasionally, someone from the meandering throngs would peel off and wander over to my stall wedged between an array of artisan butters (with samples) and another booth of artisan liquors (also with generous samples).
Just for occasions like this I had prepared a snappy elevator pitch about the book: “Luck Favors The Prepared is a collection of non-fiction short stories that are funny and not funny about life, death, and customer service.”
For the most part, those who weren’t interested in the book would turn it in their hands to feel it’s heft, as if to gauge the worth of the writing inside by the weight of the book. They might politely demure with something like “Interesting, thank you.” while easing back and away from my booth – as one would politely back away from the unlucky sampler at Costco who was given the unenviable task of demonstrating detergent or glass cleaner. But the curious ones who weren’t scared away by a book stayed and thumbed through the pages to read a sample and make small talk.
And wouldn’t you know it, I even sold some books!
Hocking the book at the Night Market afforded a unique opportunity to watch people skim the pages in real time. Most everyone did what I do and went straight for the first line, which was “I didn’t even want the job.” Curiously, others skipped to the back, to the author bio. And I could always tell when they clapped eyes on the part about Oxford commas:
It said, "Nathaniel does not use Oxford commas."
Their expressions would change. Those who were amused were much more likely to buy the book. Those who were not, winced, and shut the book and hurried away. It was about a 50/50 split.
One older gentleman looked up from the book and seemed genuinely shocked, he said, “You don’t use Oxford commas?!”
I responded, “You’re welcome!”
He said, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I laughed, thinking he was joking, until I realized he was dead serious.
I asked, “I beg your pardon?”
The man shook his head cartoonishly and put down the book, mumbling under his breath about kids these days. He was still shaking his head when he walked away. I watched him walk over to a lady who was trying samples of hot sauces. He said something to her, and poked his thumb in my direction. She looked over at me. I waved. The man whispered something into her ear. She looked horrified—as if he’d just stuck his tongue in her ear.
The two of them stayed there, sampling their samples, and squinching their faces at me.
I thought, really now.
For a brief refresh, an Oxford comma (or, the serial comma) is an unusual comma with an unusual job. You can find it at the end of a sentence containing multiple subjects or a list of items. The Oxford comma is used to separate the penultimate item from the very last item. The casual tendency is to finish a sentence with an “and” separating the last two subjects. Because that is how we talk. But there is a very vocal demographic that believes this is incorrect since an “and” joins together those last two items while the Oxford comma keeps them separate.
I love commas. But until recently I believed the presence of an Oxford comma indicated sloppiness, an overly prescriptive eagerness to dispense a comma willy-nilly, with little regard to its true usefulness. For me, the Oxford comma cheapened the basic comma. I would have even described the Oxford comma as a kind of anti-comma since I love a basic comma for its ability to add a pause or a break—and, by proxy, a conversational aire to a sentence—while the Oxford comma made a sentence overly structured and turned the cadence stilted and clunky. To garnish a sentence with the Oxford was to cater to the sentence’s structure, rather than how it reads.
Notice the absence of the Oxford comma between “shipment” and “or” in this sentence: “Overtime rules do not apply to the canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of agricultural produce; meat and fish products; and perishable foods.”
That infamous sentence landed a Maine shipping company in hot water legally. Here, the absence of an Oxford comma inspired a class action lawsuit brought by truck drivers who claimed they were denied thousands of dollars in overtime pay. The drivers argued the absent punctuation between “shipment” and “or” lumped them with the box-packers. The delivery drivers—who don’t pack boxes, and who were supposedly expected to work overtime to make their rounds—took exception to this inclusion.
I agree with the delivery drivers on this one. Though, not because of the supposed sloppy punctuation of their HR department. But because all workers who work overtime should be paid overtime wages. Obviously.
That sentence sure was whopper, but its message was clear enough without the Oxford comma: NOBODY at this company gets paid overtime.
Here, the Oxford wants to take a regular, perfectly understandable sentence and impose on it silly and unnecessary rules. And while I can’t speak for the people involved in this specific case, I have found Oxford-correctors to be a particularly obnoxious breed of sanctimonious grammar grandstanders, wagging fingers at everybody in the room like the political vegan some monster invited to your Thanksgiving dinner.
You might hear a diehard Oxfordian say something like “Without an Oxford comma, this is that, and that is this and you can’t have this if you don’t have that.” And so on. Rules! Rules! Rules!
For fear of looking like a dolt, or to sensibly avoid unnecessarily tangling with a grammar nazi, most everyone will agree with the Oxford bully and back away into the bushes.
This is where my grudge with the Oxford comma began, in college probably, since college is where I encountered the most concentrated community of unproven English majors. Likely, it was in one of our insufferable peer editing groups where some contrarian fedora-wearing Chauncy was only too willing to point out the erroneous punctuation in my copy. I can picture it now, with much fanfare, so-and-so announced that not only could I “show more, and tell less” in my writing, but I chronically omitted Oxford commas in what seemed to be a habitually sociopathic tendency to misled my readers with improper punctuation.
That pretty much sums up college.
College is where I learned the Oxford comma is essentially the middle-manager of punctuations—a nobody with an inferiority complex who would happily impose itself on an otherwise functional system and muck-up the gears for its own self-affirming gratification.
Obnoxious Oxfordians aside, I commend whomever noticed the omitted Oxford comma in The Case of the Underpaid Delivery Drivers for two reasons:
In the absence of the Oxford comma, they saw their shot for an overdue payday, and they went for it. Good for them! I salute their resourcefulness and creativity. Secondly, when they hitched the crux of their case to the Oxford they took what would otherwise have been a humdrum procedural over unpaid wages and made it go viral bringing much more attention to their case than a class action lawsuit over grammar might normally solicit.
If arguing the Oxford was a boon for their case, it was also a boon for my grudge against the punctuation since therein was unwittingly created the most delicious articulation to how much a killjoy this bratty little dot can be: only an argument for the Oxford could fly in court. Only a lawyer could defend a place in this world for a punctuation whose singular job is to be a wet blanket. To perpetuate needless rules and fussiness—structure for structure’s sake. To champion the Oxford is to coddle the binary reader who cares more for rules than for content.
I’ve always admired writers whose prose meets a reader only half way. Writers who will lead a reader up to a certain point and then let go, explaining only the bare minimum and allowing the reader to take it the rest of the way. The reader fills in the blank spaces with their imagination and populates what isn’t or what is said with their own expectations and suspicions.
In this give-and-take, the reader is an invested participant in the text—the perfect conditions in which an omitted Oxford comma, be it the purview of the writer—might go blithely unnoticed. I mean, I’m not saying the instruction manual for your car should read like T. S. Eliot. But there can be a balance. There can be a time and place for the Oxford comma. Sometimes it’s okay to cater to structure, especially when the structure helps to clarify the content
As noted, my prohibition of the Oxford comma originated from a lasting loathe of self-righteous nitpickers and a distaste for accommodating the reader. That has not changed. But after time, and after too many pointless (and surprisingly vitriolic) arguments, eventually I tempered my campaign to eradicate this futile punctuation. With age, and a plummeting wherewithal to give a damn, I realized that boycotting the Oxford comma was probably childish and a huge waste of time and probably invited more meaningless arguments than if I’d just left the subject alone.
Eventually I realized that, ironically, my strict disallowance for a supposed over-adherence to rules and structure, had made me excessively rigid in my adherence to a rule. I’d turned myself into an inflexible writer who believes there is only one way to do the thing.
To further my begrudged acceptance of the Oxford comma, the years I’ve spent in marketing have demonstrated—like the universally loathed Microsoft Word—most, if not all my clients traffic in the Serial comma. If I want to do my copywriting in peace and harmony, I am compelled to use the Oxford comma and, god help me, Microsoft Word.
Outro
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Don’t Remember Me Like This.
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