The other day I was driving my middle child to school and he asked me to quiz him on pronouns just in case he had a pop quiz in class. I glanced at the page and saw three headings, Subjective Pronouns, Objective Pronouns, and Possessive Pronouns. Underneath the Subjective heading I saw the following pronouns listed:
I
you
he
she
it
we
they
You’ve all learned this before, so there’s probably nothing surprising there. Despite the commonality, I immediately chuckled out loud after seeing this list. My son was perplexed as to what would make me laugh after reading a list of pronouns. “What’s so funny?” he asked. I proceeded to tell him a tale from my own youth, that of my own 5th grade year. I attended a Catholic elementary school for grades 1-6 and several teachers there were nuns. Nuns in Catholic schools get a bad rap, but in truth I loved and respected every one of them dearly. My 5th grade teacher was a particularly respect-worthy nun whose name began with a “T”. She was fully Irish and her most memorable quote was, “I’ll slap yer face for ye”, and I’m pretty sure she meant it. Naturally, we affectionately called her “Sister T”. Hey, it was the 80s and Mr. T was pretty imposing, so it fit pretty well. I’ll also say this: in a match between Mr. T and Sister T, my money was easily on her.
I pity the fool indeed.
Anyway, there are several Sister T stories I could tell you, but the one I told my son the other day had to do with subjective pronouns. She would drill us over and over with her lessons by making us repeat things to memorize them. We would finish a recitation and she would say, “Again”. The process would repeat until she had walked up and down every aisle in the room.
Needless to say, we remembered a lot.
I’m sure the lesson began harmlessly enough. That was until she recited the subjective pronoun list which was identical to the one from my son’s textbook above. She had a very rhythmic pattern and tone to her voice and it never wavered. Emphasis was placed on alternating syllables, her tone rising and falling and sounding like DAH da DAH da DAH DAH da. As we were all (I’m sure) barely paying attention to another boring lesson, she said the words:
“I, you, he, she, it, we, they”.
My ears perked up a little. Did I hear her correctly? Did she just say…?
“I, you, HE, she, IT, WE, they”
Okay, I definitely heard it that time. If you say it out loud to yourself you’ll hear it too. ‘She’ and ‘it’ rolled together to almost form a single word, “sheeeIT”, and it was just about the best thing I had ever heard come out of her mouth. Holy cow! Sister T just said a bad word! She totally did! And now she wants us to say it too?? I looked around and noticed I wasn’t the only one to realize what had just taken place – and she was just getting started walking down the aisles!
“Again”
We all chimed in with great enthusiasm along with her this time, “I, you, he, she, IT, we, they!!”
“Again” (Yes, ma’am, we’d be happy to)
Each time our voices rose in unison to what was the single most memorable lesson of that entire year. We got louder and louder with each progressive “IT”. Some snickered now and then, but were quickly drowned out by the chanting voices. She probably noticed the snickering but I’m not sure if she ever realized why it was taking place. I fully believe by the time the lesson ended she was genuinely surprised (and probably pleased) we were so passionate about subjective pronouns.
All I know is I never forgot them, and now you probably won’t either.
You’re welcome.
