Me, Myself, and I

Myself thinks it is strange that people want to add syllables when they talk or write. If yourself doesn't believe myself, take a listen the next time yourself and your colleagues are in a meeting.

Reads ridiculously, no? Over the past several years, there has been a 'self pandemic.' It used to be that every once in a while you would hear someone misuse a reflexive pronoun, but it seems to have become more and more common. In fact, this issue is creeping into use more and more frequently, and I find it distracting.

I've seen it in some comic books I've read recently, but also in movies. Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian did it once. I hear it in conference calls for work quite frequently: "Myself and Joe will..." or "we will rely on yourself and Mary to follow through..."

Last night, Michelle and I watched Inglorious Basterds, and while the movie itself was entertaining, I was disheartened to see no fewer than five cases of reflexive pronoun misuse in the subtitle translations.

I hat to be a stickler, but the reflexive only makes sense when the subject of the sentence matches. I can do something for myself, you can do something for yourself, but I cannot do something for yourself. I'd rather see people confuse I and me. When you've got a group of people, take out the others to figure out which pronoun to use. There are plenty of resources out there. Even wikipedia has a decent simple write up, so I'm not going to give a tutorial.

I just hope that people will slow down and stop adding extra syllables. :)