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.”

The California ex-pats have settled into the Pacific Northwest just fine. They have a cozy house, interesting friends and a new life in Port Townsend, Wash. They had been living with the rest of us in Sonoma County, the chosen spot on earth, as far as nature is concerned, as stated by no less than Luther Burbank. But was it enough for them? No, they had to go and choose a new paradise.

It’s bittersweet when old friends move away. You get everyone in their places, establish your A-friends list and then somebody breaks up the old gang - goes off on vacation, discovers a dream spot in a charming village, comes back, sells the house and too bad about you.

It’s more disturbing than a colleague suddenly emptying his cubby. How come he’s moving on and you’re not? It makes you question your own contented state.

But you do the going-away parties and wave goodbye with a touch of envy, admiration and crossed fingers that they’ve made the right leap. (If it’s a flop they can always come back.)

The good thing about friends of long-standing is that even when the location changes the people don’t. I’d know their home anywhere. There would be at least two cats hanging around. Family photos of three boys on the wall. There’d be her funky old living room lamp with the thick fringe that looks like a giant Vietnamese sunhat. He’d have his truck and now a tractor. There would be home-made trail mix, Bon Appetit dinners, antique roses and sweet peas which stay lush into the fall without the frying California heat.

It is reassuring to know that people in late middle age can fearlessly pack up and move on to a new adventure.

They have thrived in their corner of the Olympic Peninsula. They have become sailors. She did her first triathlon, urged on by new friends she met at the gym. He became a crabber. She plays her cello in a community orchestra. They did not become survivalists.

Their new home is a Victorian seaport town but it is not a strange, exotic land. The political and art community and strong hippie heritage make it almost a match for what my friends left behind. The Saturday morning Port Townsend farmer’s market feels and looks like the Sunday market in Sebastopol with everything from lavender to tamales and people talking up the joys of slow food.

They didn’t even have to adapt to a new dress code, except to add sturdier rain gear. Casual outdoors trumps high fashion, just like in West Sonoma County. Fleece and jeans are de rigueur. It is said the only person to regularly wear a suit in Port Townsend is her honor, the mayor.

Our former Californians say that every so often they’ll see a familiar scene of the old surroundings and feel a twinge of homesickness. They love their Doug firs and Cedars but miss the redwoods. A movie shot of the Golden Gate Bridge can send a pang.

We brought them two loaves of sourdough. In exchange they provided sightings of bald eagles, a hot tub that looks into a forest, a film festival, a side trip to glaciers, crab cakes and an introduction to Working Girl White, the local wine.

It’s regrettable when good friends move away. But the pain is lessened when they choose well and add on a guest cabin.