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Best Times - VIP POV

Hello this is AJ, welcome to the point-of-view stories for this month’s VIP Lesson Set.

Let’s go. Let’s just start right away. Three versions, just listen. Your job is just to listen to these every single day again and again and again. Notice the changes. Don’t think about grammar rules. Please, don’t do that.

All right, let’s start. Let’s tell it from the present as if it’s happening right now.

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Chatty Cathy is a blabbermouth. She never stops talking. In fact, no one can get a word in edgewise with her. No one can get a word in edgewise with Cathy because she’s such a blabbermouth.

Well, one day she decides to go to a movie. She goes to a movie with her friend Angelina Jolie and during the entire movie she blabs. She blabs and she blabs and she blabs during the whole movie. Angelina gets very annoyed and she say to Cathy, she says “Cathy, don’t be such a blabbermouth. Don’t be such a motormouth. Listen to the movie, just chill. Just relax.”

Well, after Angelina yells at her, Cathy realizes that she is indeed a compulsive talker.

She realizes this, but then she thinks why. Why am I such a compulsive talker? She contemplates this question for a long time. Finally, one morning while she’s having her 18th cup of coffee she says ‘Aha! I realize why. It’s because I drink 18 cups of coffee a day. I am always amped up. I’m always super excited. I’m always amped up, too much energy.”

So she decides to quit drinking coffee. She quits drinking coffee and, eventually, she relaxes. Eventually, she chills out and becomes a very relaxed person. In fact, she becomes an excellent listener.

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That is the first version of our story. Next version let’s go to the future, as usual. The future is a very common simple one. So, again, let’s imagine I have a crystal ball and I can see into the future and I know what’s going to happen in the future.

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I know there will be a woman named Chatty Cathy in the future. She’s gonna be a blabber mouth. She’s going to be a blabber mouth. (I remind you every month that ‘gonna’ means going to. We use gonna in casual, informal speech. We don’t really use it in writing.)

Chatty Cathy is gonna be a blabber mouth. She’ll never stop talking. No one will be able to get a word in edgewise with her. One day in the future she’s gonna go to a movie with her friend Angelina Jolie and she’s gonna blab during the entire movie and Angelina will get very, very annoyed.

Finally, Angelina will say to Cathy “Cathy, don’t be such a motormouth. Listen to the movie, just chill.” Well, at that point Cathy will realize that she is indeed a compulsive talker, but then she’ll ask herself why. Why am I such a compulsive talker? Hum, I don’t know.

She’ll contemplate this question for a long time, until one morning in the future while she’s drinking 18 cups of coffee she’ll realize. She’ll have an aha moment. She’ll realize “Aha! It’s because of the coffee. I’m always amped up.” She’ll realize that she’s always amped up because she always drinks 18 cups of coffee a day.

Well, at that point she’ll decide to quit drinking coffee. She’ll decide to quit drinking coffee and she will indeed quit and then she’s finally gonna relax. She’s finally gonna learn how to relax. In fact, she will really chill out and she will become an excellent listener.

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And that’s version two of our story. Let’s go on to version three. Version three starts with since, since she was a small child. It means starting when she was a small child and continuing for a while up until a point closer to the present. Let’s start.

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Since she was a small child, Chatty Cathy has always been a blabbermouth. She has been a blabbermouth most of her life. She has never stopped talking. Starting when she was very young and continuing for most of her life she has never stopped talking. No one has ever been able to get a word in edgewise with her.

Every time she has gone to a movie she has blabbed during the entire movie, every time since she was young and then continuing on. She has blabbed and blabbed and blabbed during every movie she has attended and she has annoyed everyone she has attended with. In fact, usually people have not wanted to go to movies with her because she has always blabbed so much during the movies.

Well, one day she went to a movie with her friend Angelina Jolie and, again, of course, she blabbed during the entire movie and this time Angelina got very annoyed and said “Cathy, don’t be such a motormouth. Listen to the movie, just chill.” At that moment, Cathy realized that she was a compulsive talker, but then she asked why. Why am I such a compulsive talker? She contemplated this question for a long time.

Finally, one morning while drinking her 18th cup of coffee she realized that it was the coffee. “Aha! It’s the coffee. It’s because I drink 18 cups of coffee. I’m always amped up.” And so at that point she quit drinking coffee. She quit drinking coffee and she learned how to relax and she became extremely chilled out, relaxed, and after that she became an excellent listener.

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That’s the end of our third version. Now, with our third version you notice change, right?

Somewhere in the story it changes. In the beginning of the story I’m saying she has been. She has been a blabbermouth, she has gone to movies, she has always blabbed and then somewhere in that story I changed it and I said she went, she realized. This is normal.

That ‘has been’ means starting in the past and then continuing. It’s just something that’s happening many times in the past over a range of time and then when I changed it’s because I’m talking about one time, one specific movie, one specific time with her friend Angelina Jolie.

Now, I know you’ve studied this grammar before in the textbooks and I’m not even going to mention what it’s called. I’m not going to name it. You don’t need to. Just notice the change, notice how it’s used and listen to it every day.

All right, I will see you again next time. Bye-bye.