I and Me

March 17, 2019

“For the death of me, I don’t know why--”

            Do you ever wonder why bees “sting” and mosquitoes “bite”? Nobody ever says that he got stung by a mosquito or bitten by a bee. It just sounds wrong. If an insect or person uses a pointy thing on its nose or bottom to poke through your skin, you’ve been stung, not bitten.

            And, take ants. They’ll only bite you if you’ve been staked out in the desert or lying dead somewhere. Other than that, they don’t bite, they just sting. What was it that ever made us think we were being bitten by ants. I think it’s because of the king who wore no clothes. Remember him? Well, one day he apparently got stung by an ant but told everyone that he had been bitten. ­­­­­­­Though the people knew he was crazy, they accepted his assumption. Ever since then, ants have been biting the daylights out of people. They seem to be the only ones who know what they’re actually doing.

            While someone might sense a political statement in that story, it was not intended. It just happened. The same as when Virginia and Freeman came over for supper last week. By the way, we eat “supper” at our house, not “dinner.” I don’t even eat dinner in a diner. I fail to see the need for two different names for the same meal. Somebody was just trying to be cute. Cute is fine until it confuses. I believe Copernicus once said that.

            But, let’s get back to supper with the Plilers. During one of the few lulls in conversation, I decided to bring up the loss of the word “me” in conversation.”  It was after my last rib that I mentioned the word “me” to Virginia, an ex-English teacher who knows what of she speaks. I told her that it steams my clams when I hear someone shatter the rule involving the usage of  “I and me” in a sentence. It took me a good while to learn the rule, so it both stings and bites when people break the rule.  

             I thought Virginia, too, would feel anguish over the death of “me.” I asked her if she had noticed how many people have replaced the word “me” with “I” whenever someone else enters the picture. Virginia had no idea of that of which I was talking, so I had to give her an example of that to which I was getting. (That’s correct usage of grammar that sounds just horrible.)

            I explained that, while it is proper to say, “Kay and I invited Freeman and Virginia over,” it’s improper to say that “Freeman and Virginia invited Kay and ‘I’ over.” Nobody invites “I” over for supper. They invite ME. Yet, if I bring someone with me, people often refer to us as “Kay and I.”  That’s just wrong, yet, reporters, screenwriters, and even teachers are saying stuff like that. And, regardless, not a one of ‘em has ever invited me over for supper. Dinner, maybe.

            Virginia didn’t seem to care one whit about the use of  “I” instead of “me.” If I had made the mistake, she would’ve been all over me. Or, I. She would’ve been all over one of us. 

            I recently signed up for “Grammarly,” a computer program that brings attention to misspelling and grammatical errors. The problem is, when you make up words as I do, practically every sentence has a mistake in it. My old spell-check program would let me enter my weird words into a dictionary, so it could start accepting them. My new program doesn’t want its dictionary infected by wrong words, so it constantly tags my made-up words.

            If that’s not aggravating enough, there are some words that “Grammarly” has never seen. One of ‘em is “awhile.” I realize that there are times when awhile should be written as two words, but not always. My new program flags every “awhile” it catches, and it acts as if I’m stupid to keep using the word. Hey, I can tell when a program uses sarcasm.  

            There are only a few hundred other gripes I have about word usage, but I only have time for one more. I’ve decided to end on the writing of numbers. In most books and in every newspaper the writer is supposed to spell out each numeral from one and nine. Ten is optional. Naturally, any number that begins a sentence has to be spelled out. That’s why I seldom begin a sentence with “One hundred forty-seven.”

            Some would think it no big deal to have spell out a number. But, it is if you include a lot of numbers when you write.  I can see the reason for writing out “one.” It might get confused with a lower case L. But the other numerals have swirls and weird lines jutting out, so you can’t possibly get ‘em mixed up. But, it doesn’t matter. I imagine it was Joseph Pulitzer who came up with the rule. Maybe Miss Manners.

            Okay, that’s it. Right now, I say we put the matter of word usage to rest, but only as it relates to me. All of my grammatical mistakes are intentional. In fact, I got a grade card last week from my “Grammarly” account. I was informed that I use more unique words than 98 percent of its program’s users. I kid you not. My word usage isn’t wrong. It’s “unique.”

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You can contact Mark at hayter.mark@gmail.com.