By Jake Vest

There are people who think pronouns should no longer be like bath towels, as in His and Hers. It could happen. Language changes and for all anybody knows “he” and “she” might go the way of “hither” and “thither.” 

This could be fighting the good fight, but I’m not taking sides. In fact, I think the reformers are going after the wrong pronoun. The one we need to work on is “we.” 

That sentence is an example of the problems this word can cause. When I say, “we need to do something,” who am I talking about? Certainly not many. If you walked from one end of Apopka to the other on a busy day, you wouldn’t meet another person who feels this way. 

What if I said, “We need to do something about the price of groceries”? “We” would be close to everybody.  

If my cats could talk, they might say “we are hungry.” The word can be used just as correctly in We Are the World. Two felines, 8 billion people, same word? That’s just wrong. 

There is also the problem with a speaker or writer letting on that he or she is speaking or writing on behalf of other people who are all in agreement. When I was a teacher, superintendents were forever talking about “we feel strongly about this” or “we are doing that” and nobody in my hallway believed half of it or was doing any of it. 

Some revisions to make this more correct, specific and understandable are in order. To start with, it is silly to say “first person plural” to mean more than one. The plural of person is “people.” Use it.  

Next up, there should be sub-categories to be more specific: “we are ready to order,” First People Casual, indicates yourself and a handful of others. This would be spelled with a lower-case “w” in all uses.  

“We need to build a wall, We need to pay off student debts, We need to get out of the U.N.”  First People Political, meaning about half the portion of the country that has an opinion. Always an upper-case “W.” 

“WE’re No. 1, WE are awesome,” First People Collegiate. This is used for people who wear the same color shirts and who feel superior because of the actions of other people in that color.  Spell this all-capitals to indicate intensity of feeling. 

The transfer portal for college athletes has further complicated that form of the pronoun.  

Not long ago, the quarterback of what I think of as MY team said, “we are looking forward to having a great year.” I assumed he meant himself, me, millions of people who wear the same color shirt on Saturdays and millions of others who are said to roll over in their graves whenever the team loses. It is a lifelong-and-beyond commitment, passed down in families, the stuff of pride and legend. We know who we are. 

At least we did on Monday. On Tuesday when he said “we,” he was talking about himself and millions of people on the other side of the country wearing no telling what color shirts. 

This could be another subcategory called First People Temporary, indicating “I meant ‘us’ when I said it, but it only counts until I can cut a better deal.” It would also call for a variation of spelling, maybe WEE. 

On the other hand, that could be avoided by switching to a completely different pronoun – ME. That’s the one a lot of athletes seem to have in mind when they say “we,” so why not make it official?