First, let us praise the impulse behind all these slips—the salesman and the emotionally damaged son (or the scriptwriter) and the movie star are all humbling themselves by putting another person first. Then let us gently point out that if they were not so fucking polite, if they occasionally put themselves first, they would know they had it wrong. No one would begin a confidence with “Between I and you,” or complain because someone was “lumping I and you together,” or thank a friend “for getting I and Sally together.” Even Ralph Kramden would probably not say, “We have already reserved that alley for I and Teddy,” although it sounds very grand. But if you go ahead and put yourself first, using “me” instead of “I,” you can hear that “me” is right—“between me and you,” “lumping me and you together,” “getting me and Sally together”—and if you still think it’s impolite and your mother or first-grade teacher would disapprove, move “me” to the other end and you have good grammar and etiquette, too: “Between you and me,” “lumping you and me together,” thanks “for getting Sally and me together.” In the case of Ralph Kramden, the immortal bus driver of Bensonhurst, “reserving an alley for Teddy and I” is fine, because Jackie Gleason was a comedian, and the more ridiculous he makes his character sound, the better. It’s funnier with the mistake, and also revealing of Ralph’s wounded pride and his need to feel superior, to show that he is more refined than Norton. It also exposes his ignorance to us, the viewers, and makes us feel superior. It’s a pratfall in dialogue form.
It comes up at home and at work (where it shouldn’t), on real vacations and on busman’s holidays. A couple I’ll call Penny and Jeter come out to my bungalow in Rockaway and proceed to devour the cherries I’ve put out in a bowl on the table. Jeter says, “Don’t put a bowl of cherries in front of Penny and I.” I am happy that I bought something they like—I like cherries, too—and I’m not about to snatch the cherries away unless Jeter learns to say “in front of Penny and me.” In fact I find his uxoriousness charming—he is showing great sensitivity to his wife. But I do register unease at his locution, and I might think twice about buying cherries the next time.
Someone at work sends an e-mail to the whole editorial staff that says, “If you have a copy of Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic, please contact Vicky or I.” “Vicky or me!” I mutter at my computer. “You should know better! You would never say, ‘Please contact I.’ ” I don’t actually say anything to the offender, but I’m not lending him my copy of Traffic, either. To my surprise, one of his underlings shoots back a reply-all e-mail, correcting her boss: “Vicky or me.” I wonder if she will get promoted or overlooked the next time there’s an opening for assistant boss. My friend Lucette, one of a pair of lovely confident literary sisters for whom I have the utmost respect, has spoken deferentially all her life of her and her sister as “Kate and I.” They are the most loyal, supportive sisters ever. When Lucette transposes “Kate and I” into prepositional phrases, saying things like “He sent flowers to Kate and I,” some lining between my skin and my inner organs begins to shrink. Just once, I murmured “Kate and me”—she is, after all, the chairman of the English department at a world-class university, and I wouldn’t want her to be embarrassed—and she responded, “Dialogue!” It’s true that all these examples are from speech or e-mail—nobody was videotaping our conversation or chiseling it in stone. Furthermore, the linguists are on her side. They say that “Kate and I,” “Vicky and I,” “Penny and I” are units, and people tend to keep them invariable, even when their function in the sentence dictates that they be changed to “Kate and me,” “Vicky and me,” “Penny and me.” They treat these compounds as if there were quotation marks around them, like “The King and I.” I loved The King and I, especially Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr doing “Shall We Dance” (though, between you and me, I could do without “Getting to Know You”).
My friend Diane started a Facebook conversation after her son said to her, “That’s what they did for Nolan and I.” “Nolan and ME,” she said. Her son, she wrote, argued that “the language has evolved, and today many people would think ‘Nolan and me’ was actually wrong.” Then he added the sinker, as in sinker of hearts in the chests of the parental units: “Besides, who cares?”
There was a chorus of “me”s (they were her Facebook friends, after all), but a handful of responders agreed with her son that language evolves and suggested that “you and me” may be going the way of “I and thou.” Diane gave a further example: “Last summer, I was looking for my sunglasses, and said, about a pair Jamie was holding, ‘Are those they?’ He answered, ‘No, those are not they,’ and then burst out laughing.”