Adams’ Apple 3
Sigh. Wearily, I point out that a blog entry I wrote in September of 2006 has gotten the attention of someone.  Now, I added a few comments for Nathan’s commentary a few weeks’ ago in another blog entry, which makes it a little odd that Bob Walters responded to the old post.
I could have sworn, and I would if I were a little more vain, that the Halloween strip was a response to my comments, my reply being a bit of confusion with the question “What Elementary school in the Portland area is not celebrating Halloween?”  (I passed a couple on Halloween, and saw kids in costume.) But I suppose the theme of the practices of the culture at large versus those of various sub-cultures will be explored and answered by the teacher / cartoonist as he sees fit, and if I see him annoyed by an interchanging of “Holidays” for “Christmas”, I will just have to groan. We will shortly see another episode of “Parent calls the Principal because the Child relayed a cute misinterpretation of what the Teacher said” sooner or later — and hopefully the next time it will make sense.
Overall the most interesting aspect of this comic strip is the apostrophe in the title.  In my education I learned two manners of handling the apostrophe at the end of a singular name that ends in “s”, one being how this title works — the other being that you have the customary ” ‘s “, as you would have with any other name, for instance: Bob’s. I know my Junior year high school English teacher was a stickler for the latter. I suspect that she is correct, and the former is the rule that has come about due to popular usage, an evolution I am not necessarily opposed to, but one that has come along because of the awkwardness of seeing ” s’s”. In the end, the most valuable lesson of how to handle those English rules was taught by my sixth grade teacher: what you do is learn what your teacher wants, and then consistently apply those rules for the rest of the year. Practical man with practical advice, he.
Now let’s never talk about this comic strip again.