The Pirates of Grammar Island---Arggh!

John and I have been sending emails back forth, working on developing the structure for this play that we'll be writing really, really soon. I thought you might enjoy John's reply to my latest theories of what pirates could possibly have to do with grammar:

Ron,
I did not nix your vision. I tweaked your mission statement.

These are pirates. They take stuff. Stuff. They scour the seas and rape, pillage, and plunder. It's fun for the whole family.

Pirates don't track down librarians unless the librarian has some treasure they can haul onboard, put in a chest, and bury someplace. That's just what pirates do. Don't ask me why. Personally, I'd invest some of it in a good mutual fund. But pirates have their own code. It's called the Pirate Code. It's topsecret and has something to do with scurvy.

It's just more dramatic to have pirates shouting about finding punctuation than about some guy who knows a lot about punctuation. You have convinced me, however, that they will find people who are keepers of the grammatical treasure. I hope you're proud of yourself. So maybe your ridiculous idea about grammar books is just ridiculous enoughto pass muster. (No, put that back--I said "muster", not "mustard." Where's your head today?)

They gather books about grammar scattered throughout the Caribbean. (And how do YOU pronounce Caribbean? I'll wait to see what I need it to rhyme with.)

Maybe they are HOARDING. Pirates hoard. (I know that because I once knew a pirate who hoarded fruit. Especially pears. I tried to explain that it would just rot, but would he listen? Stupid pirate.)

They are out to capture all the grammar, and that is represented by the big, glorious golden grammar books. Wait a minute. Maybe they aren't hoarding. Maybe OTHERS are hoarding. Do we need a hero to free all the grammar for us common folk? Or are these in fact GOOD pirates out to free grammar from the evil hoarders? I kind of like that--good pirates, robin hoodesque pirates, taking grammar from the evil hoarders of grammar and bringing it to the people. They are from grammar island, after all.

Or if we stay with evil grammar-hoarding pirates, we need some way to free grammar from them (we don't want to end the show with grammar in the hands of evil pirates, do we?). Or maybe they just dump all the grammar in their pot at the end of the rainbow. Good thing I know so much about pirates.
John

It's me, Ron, again. I'll quickly mull over whether these are good pirates or bad pirates and whether pears actually rot when buried in a treasure chest and get back to John. As you can see, we're hard at work, building curriculum for the children of America.