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I have stayed silent long enough. I cannot stand it. On the 7 train, there’s an announcement about the dangers of subway surfing. It goes like this:

Yada yada don’t subway surf, then something to the effect of “because not only do you risk your life, you put your friends and family through the worst pain imaginable.” It’s important to note that they really hammer the emphasis on the your in the first clause.

That emphasized clause really begs for a coordinate clause: e.g. “not only do you risk your life, you risk the life of your friends and family.” Obviously, this isn’t true and thus is dumb but that’d be the grammatically stable completion of the first half of the sentence. I think what they were really going for was “not only do you risk your life, but you put your friends and family through the worst pain imaginable.”

I am hoping now that I have written this down, I have exorcised something within myself, and my eye will stop twitching every single time I hear that announcement, which is every day.

Much alike the family and friends of subway surfing victims, I was being put through the worst pain imaginable.