How Present Simple and Past Continuous Almost Destroyed the Grammar World

In the town of Grammarville, every day was like something straight out of a grammar textbook. Everyone lived according to their tense, every day just fell into place. But one day, something unusual happened.

Mr. Present Simple, as usual, woke up early, had his coffee, and declared:

— "I wake up at 7 am every day. I always do this."

Then Mr. Past Continuous appeared with a complaint:

— "I was waking up at 7 am this morning when I heard a strange noise."

— "What do you mean, was waking up?!" — Present Simple protested. — "You wake up, like everyone else. It’s simple!"

Past Continuous shrugged:

— "No, no, I was waking up, it was happening right now. I was having a dream, you see?"

— "A dream? You are telling me that you were sleeping and now you are awake?" — Present Simple started to panic. — "That’s nonsense. I wake up at 7, I get dressed, I eat my breakfast. No stories."

But Past Continuous didn’t give up:

— "I was eating my breakfast, was drinking tea, and suddenly—BAM! Something was flying right across my window!"

— "No one is flying across your window at 7 AM! You are just imagining things," — declared Present Simple. — "This is why I keep things simple!"

— "But it was real! It was happening! I swear!" — Past Continuous insisted.

At that moment, Mr. Future Simple came to the rescue and joyfully announced:

— "I will tell you how it will be resolved, but first, let me make a coffee."

Everyone fell silent and looked at Future Simple, who, of course, made himself coffee for the future.

— "So, what happens next?" — asked Present Simple. — "Do we wake up? Or were we waking up?!"

— "I will wake up at 7 AM tomorrow!" — Future Simple declared enthusiastically, not really understanding what the problem was.

Meanwhile, Mr. Present Perfect, who was always on time, approached the matter seriously.

— "I have had enough of this chaos. I have been listening to these arguments for hours. It’s clear to me: Present Simple and Past Continuous have never been friends!"

— "What do you mean have never been? We are friends!" — Present Simple was offended.

— "You were friends until the moment was happening... whatever that means," — said Present Perfect, not understanding at all what was being said.

And then all the grammatical tenses, except for Mr. Past Perfect, who was just sitting in the corner and staying silent, started arguing:

— "I was waking up at 7!"

— "I wake up at 7!"

— "I will wake up at 7!"

And suddenly, Mr. Future Perfect appeared, arms wide open:

— "I will have woken up at 7, and this will have been over!"

And everyone started laughing because, indeed, they all will be right at some point, just not now.

Finally, Mr. Past Perfect stood up, looked at everyone, and said:

— "I had been watching this from the start... and I knew this would happen."

Everyone looked at him in confusion, and it turned out that his story didn’t fit into the rules of any tense, because he had lived through it all before the problem even began.

And everyone realized that, despite all the complexity, all tenses are just time. And the grammar world was saved.

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