Channeling Lynne Truss

Do not bring unpaid merchandise into the bathroom.

The words leered down at me from a placard on a lavatory door in a major department store. It took me a moment to identify the funny feeling in my tummy. Why did the sign instantly irritate me? What was this odd sensation? Who or what exactly was this persona taking over my senses?

Then, in a moment full of secret identity-shedding, superhero-revealing glory, I became the Grammar Rodeo Queen.

Who, you ask, is the Grammar Rodeo Queen? Ha! Ha HA!

...all right, no need for dramatic buildup: it's me. "GRQ" was my high school boyfriend's nickname for me. (Romantic, no?) Friend and foe alike would ask me to edit their essays and school reports. Incorrectly spelled words, incorrectly used words, and incorrect grammar were unacceptable. In fits of syntactic rage, I would turn green and SMASH sentences into proper forms.

Eventually, I learned that this is a rather irritating trait. Though all too happy to utilize my editing skills when a grade was on the line, most friends found my obsession with words boring-- pretentious, even. I learned to rein in the rodeo queen and leave grammar alone. In fact, I submerged so much of GRQ that these days I would find diagramming a sentence to be quite a Herculean task. Transitive, intransitive... I rarely pick apart grammar these days. GRQ has been largely subdued.

She surfaces occasionally. When I first read "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves," there was copious snorting, and I blame it all on GRQ. Usually, though, her appearances are not so jovial. After months of near-invisibility, an unbidden trigger sets her off. It can be something small. In fact, it's usually something quite small, a subtle trigger such as the unexpected sign:


Do not bring unpaid merchandise into the bathroom.

This is a clear violation of the English language!

Pay attention to the noun, people! The first "person, place, or thing" in question here is the merchandise. Now look at the mangled member of the verb family limping along between "bring" and "merchandise." Pay? Really? Before I enter the bathroom, you want me to pay the merchandise?

No matter what you do, merchandise will rarely be paid. Workers can be paid or unpaid (though they are happier when paid). The distributor or manufacturer or retailer can be paid. Merchandise cannot. (Of course, if the worker and the merchandise are one and the same, perhaps the merchandise can be paid. Aside from prostitution, I can think of few examples where this is the case, and I highly doubt this was the sort of merchandise to which the bathroom sign was referring... although... it was the bathroom door...)

The sign, therefore, should have read something along the lines of:

Do not bring UN-PURCHASED merchandise into the bathroom.

The purchasing is what happens to and therefore directly modifies the merchandise, not the paying.

Am I wrong? Where is Lynne Truss when you need her? It's high time she and I had tea. Oh, Ms. Truss! I understand that "Call me, Ishmael" and "Call me Ishmael" are two completely different sentences. I love appropriately placed commas, and adore correctly-applied vocabulary. Thank you for serving as an international grammar role model.

(My apologies to everyone who found this blog boring and/or pretentious; I simply had to let fly the lasso of the Grammar Rodeo Queen. She's been eating me up all week.)