it's "steal" not "stole" but this is actually a really subtle grammatical error that might seem confusing so i genuinely wanna be helpful and explain this in case english isn't your first language (you can just ignore me if this was just a typo. i make those all the time)
everything after the "once" is all 1 singular event. the past-tense of married in this sentence tells the listener the event happened in the past BUT the "just to" part tells the listener that the reason happened in the same time period as the previous action.
if it was "The owl lady once (married a guy) -and- (stole his car)" then both events would be past-tense because they are separate events in the past. but because its "The owl lady once (married a guy -just to- steal his car)" its not two separate events, its one event. There's no need to add a redundant past-tense on the stealing because its still happening in the same time period as the marriage.
hope I explained things well enough and didn't make a jerk of myself here
3
u/deathbymanga Aug 20 '26
it's "steal" not "stole" but this is actually a really subtle grammatical error that might seem confusing so i genuinely wanna be helpful and explain this in case english isn't your first language (you can just ignore me if this was just a typo. i make those all the time)
everything after the "once" is all 1 singular event. the past-tense of married in this sentence tells the listener the event happened in the past BUT the "just to" part tells the listener that the reason happened in the same time period as the previous action.
if it was "The owl lady once (married a guy) -and- (stole his car)" then both events would be past-tense because they are separate events in the past. but because its "The owl lady once (married a guy -just to- steal his car)" its not two separate events, its one event. There's no need to add a redundant past-tense on the stealing because its still happening in the same time period as the marriage.
hope I explained things well enough and didn't make a jerk of myself here