Mary Norris

I liked cows: they led a placid yet productive life.

It was the first time I could be completely honest in a job interview. I didn’t have any experience, but I was sincerely interested in the dairy industry.

I wasn’t a man, but I didn’t like the word “lady”—it seemed not feminist—so I wouldn’t holler “Milklady!” and “milkmaid” was a little too fanciful.

After the interview, Jeanne Fleischmann took me to lunch at the Algonquin and then to the Russian Tea Room, where I ordered a cup of Russian tea. I was too superstitious to celebrate prematurely.

When I came up out of the subway at the City Hall station, intending to stop at the store and buy myself a cake and some ice cream (I was going to skip the candles), fireworks were drifting over the snow at One Police Plaza, muffled but dazzling. It was Chinese New Year, the Year of the Horse.

In the hierarchy of prose goddesses, I am way, way down the list. But what expertise I have acquired I want to pass along.

You use the subjunctive mood when something is contrary to fact.

A classic example is “If I were a rich man.”

Driving away, I felt happier than I’d have thought possible after being skunked out of a parking spot, and it was because of that woman, because she was interested in grammar. I wished I had given her my copy of the book. But I didn’t. So this is for her and for all of you who want to feel better about your grammar.

It is one of those words which defy the old “i before e except after c” rule (a rule that applies mostly to words derived from the Latin; I always have to pause before spelling “siege” and “seize” and “niece”).