James Sullivan
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Comma + Conjunction

            The boy went to the store, and the girl went to the pool.
            This pair is my go-to when trying for the nth time to explain standard comma usage to the students I tutor online.
            “So, you only need the comma with and when you’re linking two independent clauses, basically—that’s just fancy talk for full sentences, complete thoughts. You don’t need commas every time you write ‘and.’”
            I haven’t written any complete thoughts in months and am barely making enough money to slow the whittling of my savings, and with not sleeping, the tank’s empty. It’s all I can do to get through each day. I hardly go out, and the friends I do see—Bud Weiser, Evan Williams, Jack Daniels, Samuel Adams—offer little to inspire. Better writers have already thoroughly mapped the interior of the bottle. There’s nothing in me to map anymore but these simplistic illustrations of punctuation usage rules.
            Stephanie, my student for this session, seems to have a lot in her (mostly about why student athletes deserve to get paid) but seems not to know where one piece of that lot ends and the next begins. She also doesn’t seem to know (based on her early session grumbling) what to do about her Grammar Stasi of a professor who seems to care little for style or ideas—only for the grammatical and citational correctness of every line. Enter the boy and the girl.
            “Example: The boy went to the store and bought a magazine and a jug of milk. The girl’s swimsuit was shiny and red. She had a swim and then bought a snack. (No commas needed)”
            But it’s moments like this when, maybe trying to escape my tutoring hours, I start making the boy and girl into characters. I’ve gone and given the boy a shopping list. (Barely resisting a mischievous temptation to write a bottle of lotion in place of the jug of milk. Let’s hope the boy’s mother does not find the magazine.) When the boy and girl were born, I worried about accidentally assigning them stereotypical gender errands and prompting student complaints and my termination. Thus, the boy shops, and the girl swims. They live in a little snow globe housing a diorama of my family’s old neighborhood, just minutes away on foot from a war memorial park with an outdoor pool and a bright, clean grocery store down the street. They enjoy swimming, snacks, and magazines. The boy selects different items depending on the day, and the girl has a closetful of technicolor swimwear. I want to keep growing their world, but it’s enough to shop and swim and let me get back to the bottle brigade.
            “ohhhhhh,” Stephanie says, “is this that one fanboys thing?”
            “Yes, but it’s the complete thought thing—the independent clause thing—that’s really at the heart of it.” Here I reach a tricky point: how to explain to someone something they believe they know and ought to know but which they do not understand? And to do so without making them feel condescended to. (And when to liberate them? Point out that the fragment has its place in other contexts?) It’s a tightrope from which I frequently fall.
            “i think i get it…” she says, and several minutes go by. I get paid a higher rate when in a tutoring session than when on standby, so I let her think. In my years of teaching, this seems to be a key filter: people who get the idea of a sentence and people who don’t. Explanations, whether complicated or ultra-simplified, rarely seem to alter a student’s position on that binary. I catch myself using the term “Independent clause.” Makes me think of a political declaration. Then, seizing on the low-hanging pun, I imagine a cat, out on its own and fangs slick with breakfast blood. “You de-clawers can take these from my cold, dead paws!” But, of course, the cat does not speak or write or, as far as I know, think in language at all, let alone independent clauses. And perhaps neither does Stephanie: “maybe i dont get it after all lol” (Hey, Steph, all the parts are there.)
            “Well, let’s practice it a bit then. Try writing two independent clauses and linking them.”
            “what do i write about?”
            The perennial question. My perennial answer.
            “You can borrow the boy and the girl if you like.” Fear not, my children, I’ll be watching from just beyond the fence.
            “Ok.” Stephanie is typing. “The girl sat on a bench with her snack, and a cat came along.”
            “Purrfect,” I say. Safe, simple humor. Please leave me five stars and a glowing remark for the company newsletter. I have no idea how to get promoted to the final, highest tutor level, but it’s silly stuff like this that just might charm a student. You want them to feel like they’re learning from you but also in some way superior. So, making a mild ass of oneself can be useful.
            “lmao”
            Bullseye.
            “Now, what about using ‘and’ without independent clauses? Maybe listing or describing something.”
            “umm ok. The cat was orange, dirty and hungry.”
            We’ll leave the question of the Oxford comma for another day.
            “Great job! What did the girl do, then? See if you can experiment with various uses of ‘and’ with and without the need for commas. I’ll let you know if you need to revise.”
            “uhhhhh I can’t think.”
            “Don’t overthink it. Just say whatever :)”
            “Ok…”
            Just a quarter of an hour until I’m done with my brief shift. Hours are limited, so every dollar earned is precious, but I still want out ASAP. I’ve earned enough today for yet another  night in with a fresh new bottle friend, so I’d love for Stephanie to carry this shift to the end.
            “Try making a simple story out of it if that makes it easier! :)” 
            I hope Stephanie doesn’t disappoint. Yes, I may be trying to stretch this session out a bit to get to the end of my shift. But my little snow globe world is also expanding by the moment: the cat, my pet independent claws had entered, orange and dirty and ready for a bite of the girl’s snack. It feels like meeting someone new for the first time in I don’t know how long, so I can’t help myself, even imagining my Quality Control Specialist’s comments when she scans this transcript.
            “The girl asked the cat if it wanted a bite and it suddenly said, ‘Yes, I am very hungry.’”
             “Check your subjects, though. Since you have two different subjects and verbs, what do you need there?”
            “oh right, a comma”
            “Good. Try once more.”
            “The boy walked down the street next to the pool, and the girl saw his milk in a bag.”
            “I like it. Nice job with the comma and conjunction. And my characters are just on the verge of crossing paths, too! Suspenseful. Want to try a few more? See if you can mix up your use of ‘and’ while getting the commas right.”
            “ummm ok” Stephanie is typing. “The girl called out to the boy and asked if she could have some of his milk, but the boy didn’t answer.”
            Aha! Internal conflict. At this point I realize we should probably be getting back to the matter of Stephanie’s argumentative research paper, but the time on our session will pass regardless, and, honestly, writing a pile of clear sentences might benefit her more than reviewing capitalization rules in APA References. And of course, there’s the matter of the boy and the girl. What would their world now become?
            “Good. I bet I know why he didn’t answer. The boy only goes out once a day, and even though he wanted to see what was up, he was also anxious and wanted to get home to the company of his magazine and the safety of his curtains against the world.”
            Stephanie is typing. And then she is not. Well, I’ve gone too far, now, haven’t I? The tutoring handbook indicates that long pauses signal a lack of student understanding. The session is swirling out of control, a snow globe held upside down. The curtains were too much—and a cliché! Her mind must be flashing on those memes about English teachers and the deep, hidden meanings of blue curtains. Duh, professor, they’re just blue. Contributing to the story myself outside of a specific usage lesson was beyond the pale. Akin to dropping a pocketful of saucy spaghetti on a student’s paper. Rather than watching the boy and girl from beyond the fence, I, the helicopter author, hopped the boundary and stormed the field. I wait for [The other party has left the session. Leave? Remain in session?]. I wait, and I wait, and I wait.
            Stephanie is typing.
            “The girl knew he had heard her, so she yelled at him again.”
            “The boy realized,” I typed, “that leaving his room was a mistake after all and, ignoring the girl, resolved to keep to himself forever.”
            My shift is up. It’s now perfectly within my rights to transfer Stephanie to another tutor to finish her argumentative research paper review. Someone else can explain to her the subtle differences between APA and MLA, check for topic sentences. The boy and girl can wait while the boy and the bottles catch up.
            Stephanie is typing.
            “The cat raised its head and called out, ‘Hey kid, can’t ya hear me? You ventured out this far, so don’t think you’ll escape now without a complaint. How ‘bout some milk!’”
            A complaint? All right, a little more goofing off, just in the name of customer service: “This time the boy resigned himself and crossed the street to where the girl and the cat waited. ‘This?’ he said, offering the milk.”
            Stephanie sends: “The boy handed over the milk, and the girl cracked open its lid. She poured a quarter of the bottle into a big crack in the sidewalk, and the cat thanked them and began to lick at the milk.”
            “‘Is this your cat?’ the boy asked.”
            “No,’ the girl said. ‘I’m just hanging out here to avoid my homework.’”
            “‘Homework in the summer?! That’s brutal.’”
            “‘It’s an elective summer course. All online,” the girl explained, and the cat finished up the milk.”
            “‘You don’t look much like a college student,’ the boy said.”
            Stephanie is typing.
            “‘Well, somebody else made me this way,’ the girl said.”
            Stephanie is talking about the role of the girl, whom I created. And yet she is not. Somebody else made me this way.  What does she mean? Is this just another Zoomer generation kid shirking responsibility? Not that we in the next gen up are much to talk. I’ve taken this too far again, and maybe now I’ve slighted her, implied that her imprecise grasp of the independent clause must signal an unpreparedness in her for the rigors, increasingly un-rigorous, of college education.
            Stephanie is typing. A lot. I’m well past my shift and nearing the limit for her session, in fact. The setting sun glints on the remaining liquid in my nearest bottle. But Stephanie continues typing.
            “She was sick of online. To be honest, her hands hurt. Carpal tunnel? And she really couldn’t sleep. You’re supposed to make it all dark and just sleep, but she always needed that screen glow. And a person’s voice. She knew it was her fault for always using her phone, always, but that doesn’t mean it was ALL her fault. She’d never seen her professor’s face. The classroom was a series of modules and links and drop-down menus. Somewhere in the middle of that labyrinth was a thing called learning. She hadn’t found her way there yet. Instead, she had to appeal to a lowly guide along the way who’d taken the time to teach her one dumb thing. This was a small thing, but she was glad. Even if she might forget it later or use a fragment anyway. So, to not feel online for a little bit, and not worry about clauses and conjunctions, she was swimming. And snacking. In fragments.”
            [This session has reached its maximum time limit. Please conclude the session at the earliest pedagogically sound time.]
            “The cat stretched and meowed. ‘I wanna thank you two for the milk. Say, how would you like a ride?’”
            Stephanie is typing. Stephanie is not typing. An indication of lack of understanding. A pedagogically sound conclusion has not been achieved. It’s too late to stop here. I push on.
            “‘That milk made me feel just great,’ the cat said, digging its paws into the concrete as its body shot up several meters. As if it were one of those little dinosaurs that soak up water and swell up to ten times their original size, the cat grew to rival a dump truck. Its fur glistened in the sun as if it had only just been born. The cat bent down and said, ‘Hey, what’re ya waiting for? Pre-boarding for row one and two.’”
            Stephanie is typing.
            “The girl climbed on, though she did not really understand, and the boy followed her up.”
            ​“Both passengers aboard, the cat slinked down the street, gradually increasing its pace. Neither the boy nor the girl had ever ventured this far, and the boy had thought he might never see anything new again. As the cat began to gallop, paws landing delicately away from any pedestrians, vehicles, or homes, the reality of the town began to flash into existence faster and faster. So taken by the fresh sights of the town, he couldn’t help calling them out. ‘Look, a barber shop! Hey, is that Elvis on the side of that bar? And I don’t remember that stone fountain!’”
            Stephanie is typing.
            “‘Did I see a PinkBerry shop? I always wanted one by my home! And there’s a shoe store with a big sneaker on the roof. And a pond full of ducks.’”
            ​“‘There’s the new bridge! And I see a family at the playground. A man in a cowboy hat is sketching something by the riverside, and he seems to have noticed something in the water. I wonder what’s going on!’”
            “‘A zoo with an albino elephant!’”
            “‘An international airport!’”
            “‘A lake of milk?!’”
            ​Their timer had long since run out, but the boy laughed, and the girl clung to the cat’s fur. The cat continued to run over the growing town, the girl cataloged every new sight and every person with an inwardly expanding universe, and the boy, his mouth getting too dry to shout any more of the town’s wonders, held on and listened to the girl’s voice, let her words fill him up. Getting just a bit sleepy, the boy imagined what might be in store tomorrow. 

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James Sullivan is the author of Harboring (ELJ Editions). His stories and essays have appeared in Cimarron Review, New Ohio Review, Third Coast, Fourth Genre, The Normal School, and Fourteen Hills among other publications. Having grown up in South Dakota, he split his adult life between Japan and the American Midwest and now resides in South Carolina.