Analyzing The Essay 'The Grinnies'

“The Grinnies” is an entertaining essay about a young girl who had grown up with a term that she thought everyone knew. It was only through what was perceived as a bad grade that she found out that everyone did not know what she was talking about.
Her parents were both teachers who did not like it that she had made a “C” in English. They continually pushed her to do better. Her parents helped her with spelling and read her compositions. She reviewed her spelling and reviewed her grammar and trough her hard work and persistence she accomplished an “A” which made her very happy. As she was lost in her thoughts about the good grade she did not realize she was grinning and had to explain what she meant when she told her teacher she had the grinnies.
The writer describes the grinnies as a very wide smile with teeth showing and bright eyes. It is also a feeling on the inside that can last a couple of seconds or all day. This feeling can be “joyful agitation” and she describes it as a “bubbly sensation”. Every time someone brings up the event that caused the grinnies, the feeling can start all over again because of the pride inside coming out again.
The author goes into a couple of paragraphs describing that the term comes from when her Aunt Rose was very young and when she would grin, her dimples would make her have a funny look.
She apparently made up the term “the grinnies” to describe the look that she had. She talks about other instances where the grinnies were used to describe happiness such as when her brother rode his bicycle the first time without training wheels and homemade ice cream. The family all had the grinnies when she graduated as the Valedictorian of her high school. She goes on to mention that the grinnies can come from a phone call, a visit or just a good thought of something in the past so it doesn’t exactly have to be something
immediate.
I think the writer expressed herself very well. It reminds us all that there are family things we do that other people don’t understand. They have to be enlightened to so they can understand the expression and enjoy the feeling as well. The description of the grinnies was good enough that I can picture it in my mind and understand the feeling that she had and the reason she had them. It is also good that the family carried this on through the years because many times, families think something is silly and that it will pass and they never pass it on through the years.
The grinnies are something that we all have experienced at one time or another and we just didn’t have a term for it. With this essay, it will probably become something that others who read this essay may pick up and pass on. I am not sure it will become “viral” as the term is now, but it is certainly something that should. The grinnies would probably make a lot of people smile. The more people who smile will lead to more people laughing and the more people who laugh, makes the world a happier place.