Spring Wen' Sprung

     My husband Jeff majored in English. He's an excellent writer. In fact, 14 years ago, he asked me out on a lunch date by sending me a perfect handwritten note--setting just the right tone, casual yet caring, interested but not presumptuous. We had sushi, hit it off, and got married a couple of years later. I still have the note.

      Over the years, I've seen Jeff call upon his English degree to write business proposals, speeches, sympathy cards, short stories, and more. He reads a lot. Our kids laugh because he'll sometimes use--without affectation--a five-dollar word, when they were expecting a common one.

       After all these years, none of us was expecting what he scribbled on the back of some junk mail when he came in from mowing our yard in Waialua:

                           First cut all da grass

                           Den come plenny birds

                           Eat da bugs it's spring now, no? 

         Jeff had cast aside writing in standard English for pidgin! Well, why not? In Hawaii, pidgin easily conveys thoughts that standard English makes cumbersome.