A fetched thing

Mrs. Dora Carrington Puterbaugh, a housewife in Bloomsbury, New Jersey, who sells painted landscapes on eBay, writes:

Dear Grammer Genious,


Our two sons, Lytton Strachey Puterbaugh and Clive Bell Puterbaugh, are currently doing a stretch in the Hunterdon County Correctional Facility for some just silly mischief that they did (they were trying to go into our neighbor Hilaire Belloc Zansky's house to borrow some electronic equipment, and Lytton got stuck while trying to worm through the pet door and Clive couldn't pull him through, and silly Hilaire came home and got the wrong idea and called the cops). It was just some silly capering, but things sort of got out of hand.


My husband Leonard got all peevish about it and said if I think we're spending a whole bunch of our money on those kids' college I have another thing coming. I told him he should say another think coming, not thing. He said that was pretty far fetched because think is a verb, not a noun. Anyway he went and withdrew Clive and Lytton's whole college fund out of the bank and bought MegaMillions lotto tickets with it, and it was all lost.


Signed, Mrs. Leonard Woolf Puterbaugh

Dear Mrs. Puterbaugh,

I think you are completely missing the point. When your husband said your claim was "far fetched," he is misconstruing far as an adverb, when it is in fact an adjective. He should have said that your claim was distantly fetched.

Anyway, from what you have said about your offspring, the lotto tickets were a pretty good idea. Better to take a chance now than to just throw the money away later.

The Grammer Genious