Lucille

A Speech Delivered by 

The Daughter of A Tenant Farmer

In Her High School Junior Year, 1927

Her Family Worked the Land Near Millport Alabama

And She Walked Five Miles To and From Liberty High School

Page 1

High School PE Taught Me How To Conjugate Verbs. Sort of.

Eleventh grade. A tough one. Acne. So on. Eleventh grade: English and PE classes and other classes I don't remember at the moment. English class was into verb conjugation. PE class was not into exercise because it was my turn for locker room duty--caged room with baskets to hold student stuff.

So. Back to English. We had a book with lots of examples of conjugations. Each example was presented in two columns, one singulars and one plurals. Hour after hour I stared at all the examples and tried to learn the conjugations. Memorizing all the examples was tough. I would stare, close my eyes and try to remember what the conjugations looked like, and then open my eyes to check. I wrote the examples over and over. I was making progress.

But. Test. An English test over these conjugations was coming up. In fact, on the particular day I am remembering the test was later that day.

While protecting the PE baskets I kept pouring over the illustrations and I knew that I was making progress but I also knew that there was no way I was going to get all of those things perfectly remembered.

I decided to stare at the illustrations, close my eyes and try to say the things. I knew that I would have to write the examples on the test, but I was grasping for anything that might help me remember.

Then I experienced one of those moments of enlightenment, one of those moments that comes close to proving that God exists and that God is just. Sort of. As I said the examples I suddenly realized that what I was saying sounded familiar.

I shout
You shout
He shouts

We shout
Y'all shout*
We shout

Damn. This conjugation thing is just a fancy word for how I talk. Everyday. All the time. I tried it out with other verbs. It worked. I looked at the examples in the book. I said the first person singular (another fancy thing) and then I was able to complete the whole example.

Why did nobody tell me that these things, these conjugated words, were nothing more than everyday chat? I had never heard of Molière, but I must have been as astounded and delighted as Jourdain. Without knowing what I was doing I had been conjugating as far back as I could remember. Amazing.

Gym ends. Returned stuff to students. Ate lunch. Took test. Aced it.

*I was reared in the southern United States. We had the advantage of having a regularly used, distinctive second-person plural pronoun.