Another reason why majoring in English was probably a bad idea

In college, my fellow English majors and I used to joke about how we were paying thousands of tuition dollars on an education that was just going to land us a home in a cardboard box. (Odd that our collective creativity couldn't come up with a better joke than the cardboard box cliche, but I digress.)

After graduation, I eventually managed to find a job that allows me to live in a normal-sized apartment with actual sturdy walls and a roof. But I can't thank my diploma, as I very rarely invoke my English major skeeeelz in the workplace. I mean, I have to make sure that all the words are spelled right on my company's website and all of our advertising materials, but they aren't exactly five-dollar words, and as a former fifth-grade spelling bee champion, I think I could have completed this task even before I entered the hallowed halls of my alma mater.

So, not only does my degree serve no practical purpose in my professional life. But also, it has given me sufficient knowledge of the English language's grammar rules to become significantly irritated when I hear others abusing them.

Today's example: Jesse McCartney's song "Leavin." I hear this song played on the radio approximately 548 times a day, and although the teenybopper inside me* secretly kinda likes it, the song also drives me completely crazy. And not just because hearing a kid that looks like this say the word "shorty" makes me cringe like I did when David Archuleta tried to make the lyric "my boo" sound natural when performing Chris Brown's "With You." Stick to what you know, kids.

No, the real reason I want to punch Jesse McCartney's songwriter is for the crime of randomly interchanging pronouns. The whole song is directed at some girl, one who's apparently the baddest little thing that he's ever seen. Almost every line says "you": "I've been watching you all day/Man, that thing you got behind you is amazing." Except for this ONE TIME when he switches to "I" for the first line of each chorus:

Why don't you tell him that I'm leavin, never looking back again

I just don't understand! Wouldn't this chick's "shorty" be happy if, in fact, Jesse leaves, never looks back again, and therefore stops hitting on his girlfriend? How is that a threat to the guy to treat her better? So I assume he is giving her a specific script for how to tell her shorty that she's the one who is leaving. But if that's the case, then why does he switch BACK to "you" in the very next line?

You found somebody who does it better than he can

You see my dilemma. Thanks a lot, B.A. in English. My teenybopper self just wants to relax and enjoy this crappy song, but she can't focus when her grownup counterpart is tearing out her hair in frustration every time it comes on the airwaves.


*This is the part of me that still uses LipSmackers instead of grownup chapstick because hello, it tastes better. Even if it makes the Target pharmacist laugh at me when she rings it up. That's a different blog.