Yes, It Really Is All About Me….and I
October 10th, 2009 © by Susan Swartz
Actress, comic, movie star, Emmy winner Cloris Leachman, the 83-year-old with the raucous laugh and still-strong jaw line, has one more talent, as it turns out. I don’t mean her agility display on Dancing with the Stars. She is also a grammar geek.
This was revealed during the Port Townsend (Wash.) Film Festival where Cloris was the featured celebrity. During a Q and A she turned the questions back on her fans, asking for names and hometown. When a young woman offered that she had recently moved to town, the actress inquired who moved her furniture. And the woman answered, “Me and my friend.”
No, no, no, said Cloris, sitting up straight and raising an eyebrow. “Not me and my friend. My friend and I.” People started to giggle. That Cloris is a kidder. But then many applauded. Who hasn’t wished that he or she had the nerve to correct a pronoun abuser? Especially on the “me” and “I” cringer.
Later a young man with a rooster style haircut raised his hand to talk about the actress’ Oscar role in “The Last Picture Show” and Cloris followed by asking who cuts his hair. “Me,” he said. Again she pounced.
“Not me,” she said, explaining gently that he would not say “Me cuts my hair.”
Now, that’s one that you have to think about. While grammar sticklers might insist on “I” in such a use “me” is so commonly used that “I” can sound stilted and even confusing.
Knock, knock. Who’s there? It’s I. Huh?
Is this a big deal? Yes, if you remember your teachers telling you that good grammar, like proper spelling, is necessary if you want to sound intelligent and be taken seriously as a smart person.
As concerned as we are about what’s happening to the printed word, we also need to speak up for the spoken. William Safire, protector of language correctness, is gone, and it’s up to others to lend a sensitive ear. While it may be ungracious to out someone grammatically in public, Cloris Leachman did make good use of a teachable moment. And why not? She’s made her living polishing all parts of speech and has probably heard her fill of people beating up the language.
Cloris could start a club.
The sloppy use of pronouns is crazy-making for many, as troubling to touchy ears as a dentist’s drill or fingernails on a blackboard.
“Drives me absolutely mad, hurts my ears,” said Maureen, a writer/editor. “I’m only glad my mother isn’t alive to hear it.” Her pet peeve is also the misuse of “I” and “me,” with “I” being wrongly used because people think it sounds classier.
I confess to making the same goof in a column discussing end of life choices. I wrote, “Our family doctor talked to my husband and I about a durable power of attorney for health care.”
No, no, no, I heard in e-mails from readers. Surely I knew better. Surely I meant to write, “The doctor talked to my husband and me.”
Yes, and sure I could have blamed it on an editor, but it was my mistake.
Miriam, a reporter turned middle school teacher, urges her students to learn the rules of grammar – like the one on first person singular – “I” when it is a subject and “me” when it is the object. But she also tells them they need to sensitize their ears to automatically know what sounds right.
“Me and my friend” is an irksome one for her, also, but she points out that there are worse abuses coming from students’ mouths. Right now, she’s waging a battle against “That sucks.”
Tags: Cloris_Leachman, Juicy_Tomatoes, pronouns, Susan_Swartz
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October 11th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Hutch, the wordsmith, would have loved this story. Was also irked by the misuse of the apostrophe. Good one Susan!
October 11th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
I couldn’t agree more. I feel like such a weakling when I don’t speak up and say no, it’s not ‘they gave it to her and I’ or something like that abusing the pronoun, something I hear all the time and still wince over while not wanting to get too schoolmarmish and correct the error. Very bright people use pronouns horribly and it always surprises me. I hope as I get ever so much older I’ll become able to say something that’s kind of funny and let’s someone know, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to. I just wonder, do I like people, my women friends especially, too much to correct them? I can see the expression of people being corrected and it’s always a little angry. Anyway, good perceptions as always, bb
October 11th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
“Me and him laid in the grass.” Ouch. Four mistakes. Maybe five, if the grass was wet.
“It’s just being polite…always put yourself last.” “Would you say ‘Me laid in the grass?’”
When receiving a telephone call, my father always answered the query, “Is this Mr. Campbell?” with “This is he.” Correctly. I liked to imagine the the folks on the other end of the line learned something when they heard that, and began using that structure themselves.
More likely, though, is that now an entire generation of teachers don’t seem to know the correct use of pronouns, the correct use of lay and lie, or who vs. whom. They’re modeling misuse for their students. And there are fewer of us remaining who notice, or care. Even Mike Royko once admitted, after a diatribe against bad grammar, that maybe it doesn’t really matter anymore. Maybe we should just give up. He said he felt a bit like a cranky relic. After all, at the neighborhood bar, it just wouldn’t sound right to hear “Whom do you like in the Series?”
October 12th, 2009 at 6:06 am
Truckloads of bouquets to Cloris! An early teacher, maybe fourth grade, gave us this simple rule about personal pronouns: Take out one of the people to test for correctness. You’ll know right away that you don’t want to say “mother gave it to she” or “mother gave it to I.” Miriam’s right about learning the rule, but even fourth graders can get the take out a person test and remember it forever
October 13th, 2009 at 11:01 am
My peeve is the misuse of “myself” (self-abuse???), as in, “It was just myself and Susan at dinner the other night.” And how I mourn the passing of the subjunctive mood, which signals the condition of WISHING: “I wish I were living in the 19th century, but only if I were friends with Edith Wharton.”
Rock on, grammar mavens!