Welcome to the English Language

     My fourth grade teacher was named Ms. Coffin. Naturally, the name terrified me until I met her the first day. She is the best and sweetest teacher I had in elementary school.
     She taught me the most about English. We learned rules about punctuation, grammar, spelling, all that good stuff. But what was most memorable about her was her catch phrase.
     We often had questions about English, whether it was an exception to a rule or just a weird spelling. We'd ask questions like why the word "neighbor" was the exception to the "i before e" rule. And there's just not a good answer to that question. It just is. So anytime there was a question without a real answer, Ms. Coffin would hold out her hands, grin, and say "Welcome to the English language."