“Is this the person to whom I’m speaking” queried the irrepressible Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the operator.
As a youngster staying up late to watch Laugh In, I missed the wit. Of course this is the person to whom she’s speaking, who else could it possibly be?” Instead, I focused on the “to whom” construction. As an adolescent in the late 60s, I was years away from teaching English and didn’t yet know about “whom” being an objective case pronoun. I did notice that my mom, already a college teacher and a good one, smiled approvingly. I also observed that “it’s me” and “she is the person whom I believe can do the job*” made her wince. “Do not ask for who the bell tolls” would cause her to move her hands to her throat as if she were being choked by an unseen aggressor.
“The criterion is clear” and “what are the phenomena?” made her smile because the subjects–descended from Greek words–and verbs agreed. Compound adjectives separated by hyphens made her happier than a nine-year-old boy on his birthday. That the subject of a gerund must be a possessive was important to her. “We were pleased with his running to the store” is correct. “We were pleased with him running to the store” made her grimace.
I imagine that in other families using the wrong fork might have elicited similar dismay. Or not knowing the difference between a Windsor knot and a Eldredge. Not so many generations ago, young women were thought to be disrespectful if they objected to marrying the man selected by their parents, a practice that–at least in this country–has fallen out of favor. Imagine telling your daughter in 2024, “if you don’t accept Lord Balthasar Beauregard Pendlebury’s hand, we will cast you out!”
I’m going to make a distinction between teaching—dagnabbit, children should speak good!—and forcing our kids to do that which is anathema to them. The operative words here seem to be force and control. It’s one thing to model learning. As an English teacher in recovery, I am all about suitable grammar and concise expression. It’s a horse of another fox hunt to be all up in every decision a child makes including whom to marry.
Consider moving your 18-year-old daughter into her college dorm room. You could get there first and start rearranging the furniture. The desk will get more sunlight if we move the bed over closer to the closet. This table will be more functional on this side of the throw rug. Or you could let your kid make these decisions for herself. She is the one who is going to live there after all and no one ever died from having an flawed floor plan. To say nothing of the fact that she might learn something valuable from making a simple mistake or enjoy optimizing her space on her own.
When I reflect on how parents are all “up in their children’s business,” making decisions for the kids that the kids should make on their own, I am sympathetic. There is so much that we as parents can not control. We can’t keep our adolescent children safe from random harm. They can conceivably avoid a drink spiked with a date rape drug if they don’t go to any campus parties, but how realistic is that? They can evade the possibility of a horrific car accident if they never get in a vehicle and bypass every sidewalk, but I don’t see that happening either. It’s possible not to leave your cup unattended; it’s not feasible to avoid getting in a car for four years.
Since there is so much that parents can’t control, we focus on that which we can. We rearrange their dorm rooms, micro-manage, and annoy our kids constantly and needlessly. If only emphasizing who and whom, proper neckties, and the placement of furniture could keep our beloved children safe.
