With the growing popularity of "they" as a singular pronoun, many of us older people have a little trouble getting comfortable with it -- even though it is very useful for those times when you can't tell (too far away, too few clues, wearing an old-fashioned diving suit, whatever) or don't care if someone should get the pink pronoun or the blue one.
I now assume that everyone I meet either has spiders living in their hair or a mouse in their shirt pocket or both, and, voila, "they" now fits the situation with grace and elan.
And as a bonus, they're now much more interesting. What kind of spider suits that individual's personality? That citizen in the corner, talking to themselves -- are they whispering to their pocket mouse? What's it saying back to them? The ill-dressed person staring into space while industriously pinky-excavating their ear: have the baby spiders just hatched in there?
It's really quite fascinating.
(Several comments lead me to clarify that I am talking about the use of "they" as a singular pronoun in the language. While this shows up as far back as Shakespeare, until recently, it was uncommon. As for actual persons using the pronoun to refer to themselves, it's not my job to police the appearance or civil behavior of others and it would be, in my opinion, rude to try. Language, on the other hand, is the water I swim in. YMMV.)
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
2 comments:
Oh my, oh my, Roberta. I'm beginning to wonder about you. It is obvious from your projections of arachnids and mice that you don't run in the elevated circles in which I had imagined. I, myself (that makes two so we are "we" or "they") find all of my circle of acquaintances to be of a royal nature; thus, I use the royal plural for them.
Yea...I agree that pronouns are not something over which I should lose sleep. Thanks for the chuckle.
And serendipity threw into my view this bit of humor today:
A man in a bar keeps ordering double shots, drinking one and pouring the other into his coat pocket. The bartender eventually demands to know how long he plans on doing this.
To which a mouse suddenly pokes its head out of the pocket and says "as long as you keep that cat in here, that's how long!"
[If that does not seem too funny--well I did say it was a *bit* of humor.]
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