I Ain’t Got No Money

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Every time my brother doesn’t have any money he says, “I ain’t got no money.” I think he picked it up from some of his friends. So the other day I decided to turn the tables on him and explain to him what he was actually saying. I said to my brother, “I ain’t got no money.” “Why are you saying ‘ain’t’?” he asked. “I’m just saying what you say when you don’t have any money.” “Oh, so you’re broke.” “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’ll say it again. I ain’t got NO money.” “I heard you. You’re broke.” “Let me explain,” I said. “If I ain’t got NO money then I must have money. In other words if I do not have NO money then I must have SOME money. You’re using a double negative. If you are broke then you need to say, ‘I ain’t got any money’ if that is how you want to phrase it. I would say, ‘I don’t have any money.’” “Oh,” my brother said. Of course I don’t expect him to say anything different than he always does. What surprised me and made me think he doesn’t ever realize what he is saying is him calling me out on the word, “ain’t.” But he may have pointed it out because I never use the word. Matter of fact, I hate the word. Here’s why I hate the word. When I was in grade school I had to write, more times than I care to admit, this stupid sentence: “Ain’t” ain’t a word and I ain’t going to say “ain’t” anymore. Yes, I know it’s in the dictionary, but if I pointed that out to my teacher it earned writing that sentence another one hundred times. After all these years I still remember that stupid sentence.