The use of “they” as a single pronoun for trans kids, victims and crooks who are difficult to identify, or those who’d rather you didn’t know who they are, is something I find damned annoying, because it makes it difficult to read an article or story if I don’t know whether “they” refers to a single person or a group.
[I tend to get on my grammatical high horse about such things, which is peculiar, because at the same time I love the idea of grammar being flexible enough to morph with time and need; after all, the nitpicky grammatical rules I grew up with sprang from snotty academic types in the 17th and 18th centuries.]
In fact, this particular dilution of the plural is a modern culmination of a long linguistic tradition.
“You” was originally plural, but became singular as well to help chase “thou” into oblivion – because “thou” became too tightly tied to romance and religion. [Much the same happened in French, where the informal singular “tu” was kept for friends, family or lovers, while “vous” became the “formal,” unweighted second-person singular.]
Yet, “you” in English remained plural as well as singular, and also has the possibly unique position of a third, indefinite function. Think of a sentence like, “This is what happens when you mix chlorine and ammonia… [Hey, don’t even think about it, it dissolves your lungs!]” “You,” in such cases, addresses the indefinite listener – “anyone” – so is neither singular or plural.
Who’d think that a puny three-letter pronoun from near the end of the alphabet would have such oomph?
But de-pluralization is happening with nouns as well, in part because almost nobody studies classical languages.
“Media,” a Latin plural, now almost universally takes a singular verb in English reporting, even when referring to a diverse group [“social media is responsible for the decline of civilization”]. And just about nobody uses “criterion” today, using the plural, “criteria,” as singular.
While it’s not surprising that “data” has become singular in conversation and reporting, it’s also begun to sneak into science. Similarly, “bacteria” has become so fuzzy that it’s now, in much research, become an indefinite noun, which is shameful.
Ah hell, it don’t mean shit. But I enjoy being bugged by it.
* * * *
Interesting article about a major fossil collection discovered under a schoolyard in Los Angeles. It includes rare complete fossils of wee trilobites from 8.7 million years ago, when LA was at the bottom of the sea.
But then, the sea will soon make its return to LA, given current climate conditions.
* * * *
I’ve been reading the daily comic strips since I was about 5. It’s one of my few positive connectors across the years. Way back then, they ran in the big, burly print newspapers – the Philadelphia Inquirer and Evening Bulletin [now defunct]. Today, I have to harvest them online.
As anyone with this odd avocation knows, there’s a wide set of themes that pop up regularly in the strips: Humpty-Dumpty on his wall, clowns, mimes, Eskimos and their igloos, Bigfoot, a fly in the soup, etc.
Over the last year, I’ve noticed that the Grim Reaper with his scythe has been very popular, pacing through various strips week after week.
These cartoonists may be telling us something.
* * * *
I’m going to go off-course here to point to a recent success in which I take special pride – not for the success itself really, but for how I arrived at it.
Over the past two decades we’ve had a small propane heater on the wall just inside the back door, to help offset the cold breezes of winter as we zipped in and out our main entry. It was a non-vented heater, which meant it spewed its fried gases into the room
The pollutants didn’t amount to much; nonetheless, it was a bad heater for doing this, and we were bad heater parents for allowing it to.
We’d recently had a heat pump installed, which keeps the whole house properly toasty, so last week, when the propane service duo came to do annual maintenance on the larger, properly vented heaters in Linda’s potshop and my workshop, I asked them to remove our naughty little kid.
The friendly duo leader wasn’t sure his truck held the equipment to do this particular job, and when he inspected our model, he admitted he wasn’t quite sure how it was attached to the wall. But he noted 3 or 4 hefty screws coming through the back plate, so he said the unit had been attached from outside.
Well, I knew that the wall had 2×6 studs, because I’d built it, adding half-inch ply on the outside and hemlock siding on top of that. How could anyone have gotten at the hind-end of the heater without performing absurd convolutions of thought and material?
The service boss decided that the only way to detach the heater would be to slide the blade of a reciprocating saw behind the back panel to cut those screws – but I’d built a bookshelf next to the heater, so… shrug. He packed up and left me me to find my own complicated way to wangle it loose.
I do my best thinking when half asleep. Or if not the best, sometimes the most useful. So I laid back and pictured the whole set-up… the screws sticking through looked to me like sheet-metal screws. What if, rather than holding the heater against the wall, they attached the rear steel plate to the heater? If so, I should check for the heads of screws pointed in the other direction.
Next day, I found all sorts of sheet-metal screw heads. I loosened them all. Most cinched internal parts of the heater together, but eventually, yes, the heater sagged and I could pull it from the wall. It had been attached through the interior wallboard with a few plastic anchors.
There was nothing earth-shattering in my use of a screwdriver, so what am I proud of? That I’d figured the thing out, while lying on my back, using straight-forward logic. I mean, damn, my brain really is good for something, even without knowing how a propane heater is put together.
* * * *
Now for the opposite: an evening of shame.
Last Friday, outside the town bar we love, after a fine meal, with no more alcohol in me than my usual two shots of Yukon Jack, I fell stumbled and collapsed on the sidewalk while trying to get into the car – Linda was driving back, as usual. There must have been something plus the drink involved, but nothing this vile had happened to me in over 60 years.
The people outside the bar, a wonderful bunch, helped prop me on my feet, and somehow, on my own, I got into the passenger seat.
At home, I fell asleep, then woke up to find a strange, wandering thing moving across my face. Five or ten seconds passed before I mushily realized that it was my left hand… but foreign and inexplicably alien; even once I knew what it had to be, I could not recognize it.
Maybe 20 minutes later, I started to write this bit, while weeping apologies and horror to Linda. By then, my left hand had become a friend again – or at least an acquaintance – though the fingers hitting the keys were typing gibberish.
Why am I including this note here, though I feel it disgraces me? Because sending it out solidifies my need to know what happened.
And knowledge is far more important than disgrace.
lickhaven 