Chapter 2

Once we got to my house, I introduced her to Maxie then settled her in the den where the TV was and showed her where my non-alcoholic beverages were. "Help yourself to whatever you want." I told her. "I'll be back in a bit. I need to shower and put some clean clothes on." Maxie was delighted to have someone else in the house so she made a fuss over Jordan and Jordan seemed to enjoy playing with Maxie.

Once I'd cleaned up and dressed, I came back and joined Jordan and Maxie. For the next half an hour or so Jordan and I had a cautious conversation, trying to feel one another out. As time went by, I sensed Jordan was feeling more comfortable around me. I started asking her about school and family and found that, other than her mother, she had no relatives nearby since they'd moved here so her dad could take a job. I also found out she was going into Grade 8 in the fall so that meant that she was thirteen or fourteen years old (thirteen I found out later). Our conversation continued in that manner for a while then Jordan paused, looked around then at me. "Umm ... how come you don't work?" she asked looking slightly embarrassed.

I laughed. "Oh I do work, I just work from home."

She looked relieved to find out I worked. "Oh ... Can I ask what you do?" she said.

"Sure," I replied, "I edit technical documents." She looked at me with a bit of a blank look. I explained things a bit more. "Here's a situation. Someone writes something about a technical subject – maybe something like dealing with a particular engineering issue. The people who write these things – we'll call them documents – aren't always the best at writing something that's readable. In editing a document I have two jobs – first to try to make sure that what has been written is readable. This often takes several exchanges between myself and the writer.

"I'll read something someone has written and I THINK I understand what the writer is trying to say but it's not very well written. I try to reword things to make them more readable. I send my revision off to the writer who will probably come back and say that I've missed a point and telling me where. I fix that – there's often several sections that need to be reworked – then move on to the second issue.

"The second thing I need to do is to look at things from a grammatical standpoint. Is that the right 'there' in that sentence? Should it be spelt there, they're or their for an example. I also need to look at punctuation marks – commas, periods, etc. Finally, I also need to look for things like 'run-along' sentences where a sentence should be broken into two – or maybe even three - separate sentences." I paused for a moment to let Jordan absorb my explanation. "Does that make sense?"

"Yeah, I guess it's kinda like what Mrs. Wilson, our English Teacher tries to teach us."

I laughed. "Well Mrs. Wilson and I both need to have the same knowledge of the English language and how to write things but I know I'll never teach an engineer how to write readable English. Besides, if I taught them how to write correctly, I'd soon be out of work." Jordan laughed.

I looked at the clock and started thinking about supper. "Jordan, what are you doing for supper? I'm going to make a big chicken Caesar salad and you're welcome to join me if you want."

Jordan looked at me with a big smile. "I'd like that. Mom was so mad this morning that she didn't make anything for me for supper so I'd probably just make a PB&J sandwich".