Afraid of Me

“If you have a question,” the speaker said on her podcast, “Just write to John or I at…”

“Me!” I shouted at the host, although I didn’t think she could hear me. “You’re a lawyer, for God’s sake! Don’t you know the difference between I and me?”

Apparently, she did not. And she’s not the only one. I increasingly catch this grammatical error in everyday life, cringing in the supermarket. “Just between you and I,” the checkout lady says, “the strawberries are overpriced.”

Or it’s the opposite: “Me and him went to the movies…”

“John and me went shopping.”

I bite my tongue, refusing to give in to my lifelong itch to correct others. My parents, who constantly monitored our speaking, began this vice.

“I have less cavities!” the grinning child would announce in a commercial.

“Fewer!” my mother would shout from the other room.

So why are more and more people afraid to use the word me now?

I assisted a gifted editor for an in-house corporate publication a few decades ago. She asked me to review her email, and when it reached the end, she wrote, “Please send your response to Doug or myself.” I pointed out that “me” was the right word.

“Really?” she said, cocking her head.

This Ivy League graduate, with a master’s degree and a doctorate, still felt “myself” was the right word choice. Did I have to explain the difference between reflexive pronouns and object pronouns? Although I don’t remember all the names for grammatical stuff, I know how to use them.

Has something failed in our education system? Why are people afraid of using the word “me” when it’s the right word?

“Do you want to go to a movie with David and I?”

Before I can stop myself, “David and me” slips out like a reflex.

“Yes,” my friend says. “Do you want to come with David and I?”

I’ve long since gotten over the fact that all my yoga instructors tell us to “lay down,” or that my friends from Bridgeport or New Jersey often say, “I should have went…” (Okay, truth be told, that one still stings). But why is it so hard to know when to use “me?”

Somewhere along the line, people have become afraid of the word “me.” “I” sounds more formal, right? “Me,” on the other hand, feels uneducated, somehow illiterate.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so judgmental. Maybe the entire teaching of language has hindered us rather than helped us, making us uncertain of some of the most basic principles.

Or this could be a necessary step in the evolution of the English language as we wrestle it away from the aristocracy to find our distinct language.

Maybe so. Or maybe our education system has failed you and…me.