JUNE CASAGRANDE
When we got our new house, I hired a handyman to "cat proof" the
backyard. Specifically, I asked him to staple wire mesh on the parts
of the wooden fence that the cats could squeeze between or under.
The handyman asked, "Won't the cats just go up and over the
fence?"
His question was the embodiment of something that, to him, was a
universal truth. Everyone knows that cats can climb, don't they?
I stifled my laughter. How could I ever explain that our three
cats, and especially the aged and wimpy Eddie, don't really qualify
as cats? They're more like, oh, I don't know, azaleas. Their idea of
a rowdy good time is lying on the floor in any patch of sun streaming
through the window and making us wonder whether they're still
breathing or whether they've crossed that magic line between animal
and vegetable.
So in their minds, a patch of rose bushes is like the treacherous
Amazon rain forest. And in the six months that they've had this
backyard playground, nobody has gotten out. Not even once.
Neighborhood cats somehow find their way in and out, we've even had a
visit from an opossum that managed to find an exit. But despite a
face-to-face encounter with one of these strange cats, Eddie is still
certain the world ends at the garage.
Just as cats can be conditioned to accept the limitations of their
surroundings, so can English speakers be conditioned to accept the
limitations of their language. (Whew. I was wondering how I was going
to segue from a cat tale into a grammar topic. A tenuous bridge at
best, but it's all I've got.)
Consider the simple rule that verbs must agree with their
subjects. "A cat knows how to climb." "Cats know how to climb." "He
climbs." "They climb." The verb changes to match the number of the
subject. Everyone knows this, don't they?
Wait a minute. Isn't "everyone" singular? Isn't that why it takes
"knows" instead of "know"? And, if so, what's that "they" doing in
there?
Welcome to a fluke in the English language as insurmountable as a
wooden fence is to Eddie. In fact, trying to make "everyone" and
"everybody" agree perfectly with verbs and pronouns is so impossible
that the British have made their surrender official.
Bryan Garner of "Garner's Modern American Usage" explains:
"Today it is standard British English to use 'everyone' and
'everybody' with a singular verb but a plural pronoun.
He gives an example from the Sunday Times of London, "Almost
'everybody' now seems to be a 'victim' of something -- of society or
'their' own weaknesses."
