Does Your Mother Know Best?

Growing up I was nagged constantly to change my grammar from ‘me and Jodi’ to ‘Jodi and I’.

Me:  She gave the gift to Jodi and me

Mom:  Jodi and I

Jodi: No mom, you weren’t there!

Now my mom was obviously well intentioned in her corrections but it brings me back to the age old question: Does your mother really know everything?

Now in most cases I would think she does know everything, but what about grammar? Do we always need to use ‘I’ instead of ‘me’?

‘I’ must be the subject of the verb while ‘Me’ must be the object.

For example:

1)      I heard Susan gossiping about Jodi and me.

2)      I heard Susan gossiping about Jodi and I.

I am not the subject of the sentence, but rather Susan is. I am the object of the sentence. Susan is gossiping about me. The gossiping is happening to me. Therefore I am not the subject, but the object. Once it is realized that I am the object of the sentence, the ‘I’ instantly changes to ‘me’. So sentence 1 is correct

Another Example:

1)      Dylan and I are going snowboarding

2)      Dylan and me are going snowboarding

In the above sentences Dylan and I are the ones doing the action. The action is not happening to us. We are the ones who are doing the action, which in this sentence is going snowboarding. Therefore I am the subject and not the object. The ‘I’ in this sentence is correct which makes sentence 1 correct.

Now if these rules seem confusing and it is difficult to figure out who/what is the object and who/what is the subject, there is an even more simple way to know. You have to break the sentence down without the conjunction into two separate sentences, and see which sounds more correct.

Examples:

Susan was gossiping about me?

OR

Susan was gossiping about I?

AND

I am going snowboarding?

OR

Me am going snowboarding?

By breaking the sentences apart it is very simple to see which of the above sentences is correct without having to do a full analysis. When someone is trying to correct your grammar, like your mother, now you have the tools to know if your mother is just hyper correcting you,  or actually knows what she is talking about.