A short nonfiction narrative in defense of a verb tense
Nick saw the blog post and pounced. A fan of defending correct but seemingly incorrect grammar, he had waited for someone to do it: call out the use of “had” before a past-tense verb.Nick didn’t remember much from his aborted year of French and four impressive but now-fading years of Spanish, but he did remember all those damnable verb tenses. He had had trouble enough conjugating each one to know it intimately: Present progressive. Subjective. Past perfect, handled so cleanly by the Romance languages, but in English awkwardly rendered with a “had.” “I had gone.” “You had told me.” But awkward or not, it was a valid tense, and deserved respect and use.
Now a blogger had written:
I find it hard to listen to anyone who uses “had” before a past-tense verb, such as “He had told me he was coming home for dinner.” It just seems like they must have some deep glitch that prevents them from recognizing how unnecessary it is.
While Nick agreed it was not always necessary, he took offense on behalf of the tense at its attribution to some “glitch” in a speaker’s mind. He passive-aggressively pointed this out to the blogger and went to bed.
He dreamed of could’ves and would’ves and You hurt Jim and mes, all safe in a little sheep pen built in his brain. He had rescued them all, groomed them, fed them the good wet food from the tiny can. He pet them and they purred like a Spanish double r. — nickdouglas
A comment from a friend who follows my Tumblr on LiveJournal: “Yes. The past perfect tense is for relating two past events. When you only use it for one event, it leaves the listener waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“He had told me he was coming home for dinner.” Yes, and? He had, but…? FINISH THE STORY MAN.”
