That

So.  How about that?  The word means an infinite possibility of awesome.  True that.  Wud up with that.  This and that.  That is hardly that.  I mean that is all that.  Think about it for a minute.  Aside from the boring old words the, and, or evil step sisters there, their, and they’re.  What do you use more on a regular basis?  That will continue to surprise you too?  What about popular slang or birthing adage, “That just happened.”  Its one of my favorites, especially when people fall down and stuff.  Or, “that guy” coupled with “And then there’s that guy.”  You are insulting someone without even doing it.  And isn’t that the beauty of that, the ambiguity, the mystery, the disdain for actual detail.

That sits on a crown (see you still don’t exactly know if I’m talking about the actual word or something else) of language use, matched by few if any equals.  It hums as a restrictive relative clause (“He took a test that was hard”).  Kills it as a pronoun all on its magnificent own, (“That was hard”).  Blows up worlds as an adjective, (“That test was hard”).  Keeps it on lock complementizing/ subordinating conjuctions.  (“She asked that he go.”) And finally, just to be a badass, that rolls as an adverb (“The weather wasn’t that bad.”) 

That sure is great.  But some people, mostly those with worthless English degrees, trying to teach a bunch of blind homeless people how to read.  Think that, shouldn’t be used so much.  That, that has no place in a formal essay.  That, that can’t be that great.  Well, in the words of the great orator Sir Mix-a-Lot, “I ain’t down with that.”  (But actually I am…Down with that…not that)