Picky, picky

Good morning!!

I was thinking about a common grammatical error in speech that irks me very much, so thought I'd write about it though I may have written about it before.

Everyone's heard (though not everyone has said,)
"The message was for Mary and I."
Oh chagrin !
My mother would have gathered her ducklings closer and told us,
"That's terrible grammar!  Would anyone say, 'The message was for I' ?"
And we'd have smiled smugly and gathered closer as we shook our heads for the poor ignoramuses who didn't know any better.
Of course, what the poor ignoramus had been taught, by a poor ignoramus 1980's-on grammar teacher, is that the plural changes the me to I.

Oh, how wrong. We Americans educated in 1940 or before as to grammar know that pronouns have CASE.  And the case has to do with the giver or receiver of the action.  And following a preposition, the noun or pronoun is the receiver, therefore going into what I was taught is the objective case, i.e., ME.  Whether singular or plural has nothing to do with it.

The trouble is that some coo coo English teacher back in the halcyon days of free love and free will had never gathered at my mother's knee, and knew no better.  She (I'll blame it on a woman) just made up a law.  

So that is why everyone born after W.W.2 knows no better.  Well, not everyone.  Some folks. They listened to the wrong person.


As long as I am being picky today, I'm here to tell you that there's about 5 seconds' difference between crispy bacon and slightly burnt bacon.  Look to it!  It makes the difference between harmony and disharmony in the home.  It is wrong to set a slightly burnt dish of bacon before your lord and master.  So don't do it, even if he is kind and eats it anyway.  YAZZYBEL