Bakersfield.com

By: Heather Ijames

            He had used the pronoun ‘it’ six times in one sentence to describe the existence of three different subjects. I didn’t even bother to ask him to repeat himself in order to gain an inkling of clarity as to what he was talking about. I merely squeezed the circuit board out of the phone. I have had this discussion with Charles hundreds of times over within the six years of our marriage. “The word ‘it’ can be used in a sentence only after one properly addresses what ‘it’ is. ‘It’ is a pronoun, not a noun.”

            Yes, I’m a fiend for grammar, and if you fault me on it, fine. But the reason I have a relatively low incident of incorrect drive-through orders at McDonald’s is probably because of my ability to eliminate the use of pronouns all together if the situation deems fit. And I assure you, cutting corners on subject matter references while speaking to an employee at a drive-through will eventually get you a burger with two buns and nothing in between. But I digress. Back to Charles. 

            Charles is of the male school of thought that holds that the best sentence is the one with the fewest words. This group has many members. And with this mantra, it seems fairly obvious why proper nouns are so relatively skipped over and replaced with ‘it’, ‘that’, and ‘this’. There is also a sub-section of this group who has elevated their collective pride to such a level that they have dispensed with even the pronouns while communicating. This group actually feels they are communicating with gestures. The thumb pointing back over the shoulder stands for ‘that’, the index finger pointing down stands for ‘this’, and a quick jerk up of the chin stands for ‘it’. 

            Charles slips in between these two groups often, and on my birthday and Mother’s Day, I sometimes get actual identifying nouns out of him. However, just the other day we were driving to an address we had never been to before. I was driving and he was feeding me the directions I had printed out from the internet. I was going merrily down the road when he snapped, “Why didn’t you make the turn?”

            “What turn?”

            “The right turn I told you to make back there?”

            “I didn’t hear you say a thing!”

            “I pointed to the right!”

            I ground my teeth together in sheer frustration, clenched the wheel tightly and said, “Words. Words are just so darn useful. Words.”

            Rather than demand he sit in the back with our three year old and watch The Lion King on the portable DVD player, I took the directions out of his hand and pursued on like a good little soldier. 

            And quite frankly, I could have gone on the rest of my life, simply reminding him of the importance of identifying nouns, while I continued making my own reference guide to decipher what ‘it’ meant as it related to Charles. But then there came the sprinklers. We were having our sprinklers fixed and I had several questions for the landscaper who was contracted to do the job. Each time he responded to my question, I was more befuddled than at the beginning. He was, of course, using the words ‘it’, ‘that’, and ‘this one’, without ever identifying what they referred to. Combine that with the fact that he was talking landscaping in technical terms; I had no idea what he was talking about. I resolved to simply trust that he would do is job correctly and I left it at that. Later on, however, I mentioned to Charles, (who was standing there the whole time during my questions), I had no idea what the landscaper was talking about. Charles began to repeat what the landscaper had said, but inserted the actual objects that were being referred to rather than repeat all the pronouns. 

            Ooooh. He was speaking sexy now. BUT, my constant pursuit to understand this male phenomenon got the better of me and I asked, “But how did you understand what he was talking about. He never identified any of it while he was talking.”

            “Yes, he did. He moved his head slightly towards the object he was talking about each time. You would have noticed that if you weren’t so bent on using your brain just to listen. You’ve got to use your eyes to listen as well.”

            “NO! No you don’t! To listen, God gave us ears. I mean, I’m not dismissing that to communicate we can all use body language and the sort, but why, WHY, are not words your primary source of reference?”

            “See, Heather, I told you. It’s just you. We guys all know what we mean; we don’t need to use words as much as you think we do.”

            The phone was too far away to squeeze, and besides, that came a few months later. Charles wore an invisible crown on his head for weeks from that night on. He was absolutely convinced that I was wrong and that words aren’t really as important as I had made them out to be. So, I tested him. If he wasn’t going to buy what I said, I would show him, without words, why his logic failed. 

            There was one afternoon where he was getting off early from work and we decided to take advantage of the spare time and go out to eat. He had asked me to pick out a place to go to and then leave him a message to say where we were going so he could meet us there. “That place.” That was my message. He had referred to our favorite restaurant as ‘that place’ several times. Its decoded meaning sits on page 94 of my Charles reference guide. He called ten times on my cell phone once he was off from work, but I had already turned it off. My son, Ethan, and I ordered the fajitas and split it between the two of us. I’m not too much of a monster, so I ordered fajitas to-go for Charles and headed home. 

            I expected to find him pouting on the couch, but found him cleaning the kitchen sink instead. “Okay, I get it. You win.” He said in humble defeat. But as any wife really knows, victory over the male species is only half-lived. Or at least until I broke the phone upon hearing him say the pronoun ‘it’ six times in one sentence to describe the existence of three different subjects. Point – Man.