Real Bad Hurt

I returned home from work this evening to face one of the many fears that a parent harbors - my daughter was injured. When I dropped S off at school this morning she was fine, well, as fine as S can be at 8:20 in the morning. But she was undamaged and that's what is important. It seems that at some point during the day she was dancing around and fell, hitting her teeth on a chair. Her teeth seem to be okay, they hurt, but aren't loose and she still has them all in her head. Her upper lip, however, looks as though it's gone a few rounds in a middleweight fight. It's all swollen on the inside, making it protrude out like there's an orange rind stuck up in there.

As difficult as this is to see, a hurt child, what I read regarding the injury was almost as painful to my brain. The adults running the program she's in - this daycare that prefers to refer to itself as a Pre-School - write up an Incident Report when one of their wards has an accident. This is what was written there:

S and Kevin was dancing around to the music and she tripped and hit her mouth on the chair.

Colloquialism I get. I realize that conversational speech will bend the rules a little. I understand, too, that people take short cuts with E-mail and instant messaging and text messaging. But when you're putting something in writing to the parents of a child you're supposed to be educating, shouldn't you double-check things like subject-verb agreement? I think so.

I feel bad for S, especially after sitting with her all evening while she cried about her teeth hurting, but my heart also aches a little for simple English grammar, which was dealt a blow to the teeth as well today.