"Sit in a chair with your legs crossed. Now, what do you see in that mirror? OK, pretend it is your Grandpa!"

Christians might mean well, but when their brains can't keep up with their words the result can be flat-out scary. Take the website Secret Keeper Girl (which clearly needs a hyphen). It exists to teach girls that God's plan for them consists entirely of covering their hoo-hah. In their modesty test, above, they instruct a girl to sit in front of a mirror with her legs apart. Then they tell her to pretend the mirror is her grandpa.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but as a writer I try to avoid situations where old men look up the skirts of little girls. Luckily, though, bad grammar has derailed their intent. Let's examine exactly where they went wrong with a simple example:

I met Mark through my uncle Silas. I'm going to screw him until the cows come home.
In English, it's a rule that the first noun in the first sentence becomes the "it" in subsequent ones. If you interpreted this example correctly, then, you're not picturing me with a lubricated relative. Rather than telling us to pretend the mirror is grandpa, Secret Keeper Girl is actually telling us to pretend that what's between our legs is grandpa.

Now, is that better than having an elderly relative stare up up shorts? I don't know. Speaking personally, though, it's a heck of a lot easier for me, since I've already got the bald and the wrinkly down pat.

The Dangers of a Dangling Modifier, Part 1

"Before I knew it, he had unzipped my pants and put his hand, then mouth, on an area that has haunted me for life." -- Sugar Ray Leonard