Dear Mr. “I seen it”

Dear Mr. “I seen it”,

            I in no way claim to be an expert on grammar, punctuation or even speaking correctly most of the time. But I would say my biggest pet peeve, on the grammatical level, is when a person says “I seen that”.  Because you didn’t “seen” that, you “saw” that. Although I may be hyper sensitive to the issue considering I can still remember my friend saying “seen it” when we were thirteen and it sending shivers up my spine.

            I know that people make grammatical mistakes constantly and almost every time they open their mouths, but none of them make you sound more like an inbred hick than “seen that”. In fact I was recently watching a documentary on bigfoot (yes I think he is real) and they were interviewing the most back woods, deep south, swamp dwelling hillbilly they could find and he never once said “saw”. He did however say “I seen bigfoot over there” and “I seen him walk in the woods there”.

            Don’t worry “seen that” isn’t just reserved for teenagers and hillbillies. I work at a fairly priced fine dining restaurant, where most of the servers are decently educated and well spoken. I was appalled when I heard one of them, while talking about a guest, say “I seen him…”. Really? You have no problem eloquently talking about sixty dollar bottles of wine or selling forty-dollar entrees but you’ll say “I seen him”. Grab your overalls and chewin’ tobacco, it’s time for you to head south.