Gramma Knows Grammar

"Ms. Teacher Town, I have a joke. What do you call an elderly English teacher?"

It was my last class, and I'd been teaching pronouns all day.

"Gramma!" he said, delivering his punchline to the room. Ha. We took a moment to laugh about all the grammas in New England who make wicked chowda and love pa-hts of speech. 

"Good one," I said, "because my Gramma was picky about pronouns."

I went on to describe how she'd correct my cousins and I when we messed up. "My cousins and me, dear," I can still hear her say. 

Today was a pronoun-a-palooza. We zipped from subjects and objects right into antecedents before we came to a screeching halt in the face of the indefinites. 

"This part might make you mad," I warned, speaking from experience. "Just don't take it out on me." 

You see, sometimes students breathe rageful fire when they hear that 'everybody' and 'either' are singular. Eyes shoot daggers rather than look out for compound subjects. "Take out the guest to test," I sing to ears blowing smoke. "Why does it have to be so hard?" they cry.

It's like poking a bear to explain that 'they' isn't a catch-all, no matter the gender or number, as in "Someone hates pronoun rules, and he or she, not they, can't hide it."  

"Well, unless they tell us they're they," I explain. In that case, they is singular. Knowing nods from some and more confusion from others. As if they all don't default to they anyway. Jeez, why does it have to be so hard, I wonder?

"Listen," I say at the end of class. "By the time some of you are grammas, this rule will have officially changed."

If their passion over pronouns is any indication, we might not have to wait that long.