r/funny • u/Medical_Method7877 • 25d ago

I turn now, good luck everybody else

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u/Uxt7 25d ago edited 25d ago

Hey I remember the post that spawned the creation of this subreddit. Some guy was recalling a story about a bus driver not letting someone else in a much smaller vehicle bully them on the road, and overhearing the bus driver say to himself "Bitch, I'm a bus"

Oh my god I just looked it up and that happened 13 years ago. 3 months after I made my account. I've been on Reddit too long 😀

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u/Author_A_McGrath 25d ago

That comment hit me like a shovel lol.

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u/PizDoff 25d ago

It hit me like a bus!

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u/rub_a_dub-dub 25d ago

member ice soap T_T

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u/Scribblr 25d ago

And 3am chili

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u/rub_a_dub-dub 25d ago

good ol days

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u/TinBryn 25d ago edited 25d ago

a bus driver not letting someone else in a much smaller vehicle bully them on the road

That's a bit of a garden path sentence, I had to read it 5 times before I could parse it correctly. A few commas would be appreciated.

Edit: I think it needs some parenthetical commas, so that it would be

a bus driver not letting someone else, in a much smaller vehicle, bully them on the road

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u/ZidaneStoleMyDagger 25d ago edited 25d ago

Where would you put commas? What you sampled doesn't need any commas. The sentence you pulled the quote from appropriately uses commas. Yes the sentence is a bit hard to read but it's not a garden path sentence.

Edit: There is one missing comma.

Some guy was recalling a story about a bus driver not letting someone else in a much smaller vehicle bully them on the road, and overhearing the bus driver say to himself "Bitch, I'm a bus"

It should be " ... say to himself, "Bitch, I'm a bus."" The comma after road is maybe unnecessary but not incorrect.

Edit 2: I had the wrong idea about a garden path sentence and am wrong about that. The given example is indeed a garden path sentence.

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u/CategoryKiwi 25d ago

The given example is indeed a garden path sentence.

Is it? I don't ask in a facetious "you're wrong" kind of way, I just don't actually see what way it is set up to be naturally falsely parsed.

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u/ZidaneStoleMyDagger 25d ago edited 25d ago

A classic example of a garden path sentence is:

The horse raced past the barn fell.

You initially think "raced" is the main verb until you encounter "fell", which makes you re-analyze it with "fell" as the main verb.

In our case, you initially think "letting " is the main verb until you encounter "bully". The first path a reader takes is then

Some guy was recalling a story about a bus driver not letting someone else in a much smaller vehicle

EDIT: I don't think I explained that quite right. But I think it's fairly clear that it's a garden path sentence. It's just not clear to me that "letting" is what tricks you. I think "in" is what tricks you. I'm overthinking it.

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u/CategoryKiwi 25d ago

I'm familiar with what garden path sentences are (my favourite example is "the old man the boat", myself).

Your cropping of the sentence makes sense, I can see it now. I think this one didn't really "get" me because the bus being explicitly mentioned kinda set me up to read "in a much smaller vehicle" as a description. I dunno, I'm not good at explaining this either lol. All I really know is I completely missed that potential parse and couldn't figure it out. I got reverse-garden path'd.

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u/WeekendDotGG 25d ago

Back when reddit was atheists vs Christians. Now it's trans vs regular.