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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, February 14, 2000
Grammar wars claim another unwary scribe
Don't expect anything too flashy from the NewsWretch this week. I've had to spend some time in my quiet place. Only in the last day or two have I been able to summon up enough courage to venture forth and gaze about me, blinking uncertainly in the wintry sunlight like Punxsutawney Phil, the celebrated prognosticatin' groundhog.
(OK: Disregard the part about the "wintry sunlight," our pathetic excuse for winter now evidently being at an end. I just tossed it in for effect.)
Why, you ask me, am I feeling so frail just now?
I'll tell you why: I have survived The Attack of the Flesh-Eating Grammarians. Last week's column, you see, contained an "I" in a passage that, by the rules of strict construction (is there any other kind?) demanded a "me."
You'll excuse me if I don't go into any more detail than that. I'm really not up to reliving the experience. It would be like revisiting the scene of a train wreck.
Suffice it to say that on my return to my duties last Monday I was greeted by e-mails, voicemail and (the following day) plain old mail mail upbraiding me for my misuse of the mother tongue.
The messages were of two sorts, basically: Some heaped derision on me, demanding in effect to know how I dared pollute the Viewpoints Page with such an abomination. There was in some of these a degree of glee at my predicament. That stung, but after a time it had a salutary effect - something like dousing a skinned knee with rubbing alcohol. After all, I had earned it - the scorn, the obloquy, the ignominy - hadn't I? You bet I had.
The other reproofs were less punishing - were offered more in pity than censure, as it were. Gently, these forgiving souls pointed out to me the error of my ways and suggested with consummate tact that I might want to be just the least little bit more attentive the next time I ran up against one of those "I" versus "me" situations.
The most thoughtful call was from a 90-year-old lady who prefaced her remarks by telling me she loved the Caller-Times - read every bit of it, every day. Loved my column, too. Read it regularly. (Thank you. Thank you.)
With diplomacy that would do credit to a Kissinger, she went on to explain that while she had but a 10th-grade education, she had acquired in school a deep respect for correct usage. She knew the perils that await the unwary on the shifting terrain of the I-me perplexity.
These kindly, constructive promptings were initially far easier to take than the verbal napalm of the language commandos - but on reflection it was the gentle words that hit me with the greatest force.
I felt, you see, that I had somehow . . . let them down. These nice people had taken the time from their busy days to read my scribblings, and how had I rewarded them? With a display of heedlessness - nay, cultural vandalism - which (I know of a moral certainty) had the same effect on them as the sound of fingernails being dragged across a blackboard. (Do they still have blackboards these days?)
Oh, sure, I could plead the usual excuses - fatigue, overwork, procrastination - but as my readers, harsh and gentle alike, had made clear, there really was no excuse.
And they weren't the only ones I had disappointed. There were all my teachers - from Austin's Maplewood Elementary to University Junior High to Austin High - who had lavished so much time, effort and attention on me just so I could keep to the straight and narrow. (By the way, it is "straight," not "strait." I looked it up. Once bitten, don't you know . . .)
And looming above all of them is the figure of my high school English composition teacher, Maurice G. Price, the man who taught me to write coherently (though he'd hate these long sentences and parenthetical asides) - indeed, how to think. This is a man who is still capable of inspiring awe in me, not to mention gratitude: my mentor, my friendly (if sometimes scathing) critic.
I'm sure my misadventure in The Land of Me and I would pain him. That, perhaps, stings more than anything else. And so I resolve to go forth and sin no more - to mend my ways, trim my verbiage, and clean up my act.
Think I'm kidding? No way. I are serious.
Brooks Peterson
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