The Verb Story

Chapter 6: The 6 Tenses of Verbs

“The six tenses of verbs, do you know them?” Sammy said with fire in his eyes as he stormed up to Evan Wednesday morning.

“For the sake of time, I think I’ll just say no.” Evan said as he sharpened his pencil.

“Well, if that’s how you want it!” Sammy practically yelled at him, “Now, a tense of a verb is how to show the time of action or state of being in the verb.”

*Crunch, Crunch, Crunch*

The pencil became shorter and shorter.

“The six tenses are present, past, future, present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect. Hopefully by the age you are at, your slow mind has grasped the concept of past, present, and future verbs. So we’ll skip those,” Sammy said daring Evan to reply.

*Crunch, Crunch, Crunch*

The pencil became ever shorter as Evan turned the crank round and round.

“Okay,” Sammy took a large breath, “Present perfect is ‘have’ plus a verb, and it uses the past participle. Past perfect is ‘had’ plus a verb, and this too is past participle. Future perfect is ‘will have’ plus a verb, and –guess what – it uses past participle.”

*Crunch, Crunch, Crunch *

Evan, now madly sharpening his pencil, was doing any possible thing to block out Sammy’s persistent voice. He had one finger in his ear, was stomping his feet, and was still crank, crank, cranking the handle.

In a torrent of words, Sammy yelled over the cacophony of noise, “Example time! She had forgotten to do her homework! This is past perfect! She has an hour to do her chores! Present Perfect!”

*Crunch, Crunch, Crunch*

“She will have finished by now! FUTURE PERFECT!” Sammy shrieked in shrill falsetto. Suddenly, all the noise stopped. Evan took out the stump of his pencil from the sharpener, now no longer than an inch in length. “Well, I guess that concludes our lesson,” Sammy said as he skipped gleefully away.