Oops! “Let us stand on our feet”
It’s a shame that one of the most glaring grammatical errors of our time takes place when I am in hallowed grounds- at church. I feel my teeth grind against each other and my nostrils flare whenever I hear the words “Let us stand up on our feet.”
To ‘stand’, in the first place, means ‘to be in an upright position on the feet’, therefore we can rightly conclude that the word ‘stand’ is intimately associated with our feet. When I am told to stand up on my feet, I just can’t help myself, my mind immediately begins to explore the options. Is it possible, I wonder, to stand up on my knuckles? And where would I put my feet if I were standing on my knuckles? It only makes sense that they would interchange positions— so I would be greeting people after church with my feet- malformed, smelly toes and all- while attempting to fit my knuckles into my Sunday best shoes.
If my knuckles won’t work then I suppose I can try to stand on my rear end. But alas, this poses a major problem because standing on one’s rear end would mean that one is actually sitting! I suppose this renders the instruction “Let us stand up on our rear ends” completely impossible.
Moving on, I don’t think standing up on our elbows would work either because one, it would be excruciatingly painful and two, I don’t know how one would concentrate in a church service with one’s elbows on the floor and feet in the air, given that Sunday is the day most of us ladies decide to wear our modest skirts and dresses. Apart from that, I suspect the pastor would not take his congregation staring at him from under the church pews very kindly, hmmm, not unless he were to stand up on his elbows as well. And please let us consider goitre victims because sincerely, have you ever tried standing up on your elbows with a swollen neck? No my brethren, Christian charity does not permit us to do such.
Let us stand!
