Aunt Ruth Does Do Run Run

It was noon on a Thursday in mid-November when I found myself standing with a burlap bag in Central Park, waiting for my friends to chase the dreaded Snipe toward me, at which point (according to the plan, as described by my friends) I would bag the beast and become the hero of the city. At least, that’s what my friends had told me at midnight, only twelve hours earlier.

Anyway, so there I was, awaiting patiently — my friends had also said this snipe hunt could take up to twenty-four hours — when I felt the ground rumble beneath my feet. At first I thought it might be an earthquake, but I dismissed that when I astutely realized that the rumbling was in a regular pattern: thud, thud, thud, thud … well, you get the idea.

Glancing in the direction of the thuds, I saw from afar a giant blob of jello entering the park, running through a self-formed tunnel of onlookers who were cheering and applauding. I whipped out my binoculars to get a closer look, and much to my surprise I discovered that the giant blob of jello was really a short, plump jogger. In fact, it was Aunt Ruth!

A police car, lights flashing, was following Aunt Ruth at a safe distance, and Aunt Ruth was headed toward a banner that read, “FINISH: NYC Marathon.” Using my mental acuity and a little bit of high tech number crunching, I was able to deduce that Aunt Ruth was finishing the New York City Marathon in a time of Eleven Days four hours two minutes and some odd seconds.

Being a fine physical specimen myself, I raced over to the finish line. It was over one hundred yards away, but still I managed to reach my targeted destination in just three minutes.

“Aunt” … (huff huff) … “Ruth,” I huffed and puffed, “I didn’t” … “know that” … (huff puff puff) … “you were a” … (huff huff) “runner!”

“Why, it’s my nauseating nephew! How are you? You don’t look so hot. Have you been running for the past eleven days too?”

“Uh, no. I was standing over by that tree, waiting for the dreaded snipe to come my way.”

“The dreaded … oh dear,” she said with a sigh. “We’ll have to talk sometime. But first, since the crowd is expecting it, I’ve got a song to sing.”

“A song?”

“Yes, I promised them that if they waited for me at the finish line, I would sing for them.”

I glanced at the crowd. There were probably two thousand people standing there.

“What song is it you want to hear?” asked Aunt Ruth.

Someone in the back of the crowd yelled, “Freebird!” Aunt Ruth chuckled.

“Listen, I’ve got a song for you all. I’ve had eleven days to practice it, and I think I’m ready. Mike, please?”

Someone handed her a microphone, and a karaoke machine began playing.

She stepped to her left; she stepped to her right; she clapped her hands; and she wiggled her hips. It was gross but intriguing in a bizarre kind of way. Then she began singing.

“I finished on a Thursday when my legs were tired;
I runned runned runned runned, I did ran ran.
I never thought that I could be this wired;
I runned runned runned runned, I did ran ran.
Yeah, my legs were tired; Yeah, I was really wired;
I runned runned runned runned; I did ran ran.”

“Whoa, wait a minute, stop!” I shouted, simultaneously pulling the plug on the karaoke machine.

“Why, what’s the matter, rancid relative?”

“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?”

“What happened, oh spoiled leaf on the family tree?” she asked, apparently a bit perturbed at my interruption. “Did you swallow a parrot?”

“No, I didn’t. Aunt Ruth, you can’t say, ‘runned runned runned runned, I did ran ran.’ That just doesn’t work.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“First of all, the past tense of run is not runned; it’s ran.”

“Ran? I thought with verbs you doubled the consonant and added ed at the end.”

“Not with irregular verbs like run.”

“Run is irregular? Well tell you what. Send it out on a marathon, and before it gets across the Tappanzee Bridge it won’t be irregular any more.”

“What?”

“Never mind. So what should I be singing?”

“Well, if you want to incorporate your running adventure with the “Da Do Ron Ron” song, I suppose you could say, “I ran ran ran ran, I did run run.”

“Wait a second there, young man. I understand the ran ran ran ran part — that’s the past tense of run, after all, as you so adeptly pointed out to me — but why did you say, ‘I did run run,’ when run is the present tense?”

“Well, it’s like this. Is your comfy chair around? It’s time for a grammar lesson.”

Aunt Ruth made a gurgling noise.

“Aunt Ruth, pull your finger out of your throat. This isn’t that bad. I promise.”

“Promise? You promised last week that you’d make me a great tuna salad sandwich, and do you remember what happened?”

“Well yeah, I, uh …” I stammered, blushing.

“Go ahead, my erstwhile cousin chef, tell the crowd about the sandwich you made.”

“Okay, okay, it’s not that big a deal. I just forgot to remove the tuna from the can.”

“Yes it’s true,” she said triumphantly. “I ate a picture of Charlie Tuna before I knew what was happening. Now, do you really promise the grammar lesson won’t be so bad?”

“Well, no, I guess I can’t make that promise. But may I try?”

“Yes you may, my nit-wit nephew.”

“Okay Aunt Ruth, it’s like this. The verb do can be used as an auxiliary verb. Namely, you can use it with the infinitive form of other verbs to create the indefinite present and indefinite past tenses of words.”

“The … what?” she said, turning pale.

“Don’t worry about what it’s called, but it’s something you can use to emphasize that you indeed did do something.”

“So what should I say?”

“Well, for the indefinite present, you could say, ‘I do run run run,’ and for the indefinite past you could say, ‘I did run run run.’ Your pick.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. Turning the karaoke machine back on, she broke out into a rendition of Freebird that soon had all of Central Park singing along.

That’s my Aunt Ruth, and oh she did sing!