Personal essays
The plural you is made up of a lot of singular yous
Plural
Last week I met a friend for coffee and apologized for something I’d said years before.
I’d apologized at the time because when something you say upsets a friend you pause and consider things from their point of view.
I didn’t understand why it upset him but I understood that it upset him.
I said I was sorry.
Not one of those “I’m sorry that you feel that way” but “I’m sorry, I’ll try not to say that again.”
My friend works for Apple and when we meet we eventually talk about technical topics. I’ll often have a question and he’ll look at my code and sometimes he’ll ask, “why did you do it that way”.
I answered, “because you told me that was the way to do it.”
This is what upset him. The word “you”.
I meant the plural form of you and not him specifically. I meant that Apple had advised the thing I’d done.
He knew that that’s what I meant and pointed out that I’ve said things like that in our meetings over time and it really bothered him.
I apologized. When the words you use upset someone you care about, you should choose other words.
So I started being more specific that I’d seen this advice in a particular document or video.
I stopped saying “you”.
Singular
I’m not getting a lot done these days. I’m distracted by this whole democracy coming to an end thing.
People have joked about doomscrolling for years but now it feels like exactly that.
Five plane crashes in four weeks and our government lays off hundreds of people working for the Federal Aviation Administration.
An outbreak of measles and another of bird flu and our government lays off thousands of public health officials and shuts down means of communication.
There are serious problems facing our country and our elected representatives are proposing bills like taking over Greenland and renaming it “Red, White, and Blueland.”
In my doomscrolling I came across two people I know discussing politics.
One, a Canadian, wrote a post that included phrases such as “You allow school shootings”.
I’ve actually seen him do this in conversations with different people.
The other person invariably responds that they don’t allow it, they oppose it. The other person details all of the things they have done to oppose our current government.
But the Canadian clarifies that in this case he is using “you” in the singular form. If it is happening, he blames each of us individually.
He means me and he means you.
Exceptions
Friday I got a text from a woman I went out with a couple of times.
I hadn’t heard from her in months and you never know where an out-of-the-blue text will lead on Valentine’s Day.
She asked how I was doing on the dating sites.
I told her I’d swiped right on every age-appropriate, single, liberal woman within thirty miles.
She asked why I restricted myself to liberal women.
She’s a conservative who thinks she is a moderate. It’s why we only went out twice.
I told her (again) why liberal values are important to me and that I don’t understand people who don’t support voting rights, the rights of women and minorities, and -
And she cut me off.
She told me that her children believe that all liberals are fascists.
She then showed me how her children had come to that conclusion by launching into a tirade of “You believe this” and “You do that.”
Before we got to her telling me that I beat puppies, I interrupted to say that I was ending our conversation. I told her I’d always been kind and supportive of her and I didn’t appreciate the name calling.
“Oh,” she texted, “I didn’t mean you. You are a nice person.”
Sigh.
It reminded me of racists I’ve known through the years who say bad things about all black people and then look across the room at their one black friend and say, “not you, you’re one of the good ones.”
The liberals she so hates are made up of singular “you”s like me and “you”s with whom I share much.
The Americans doing all that the Canadian man hates are made up of “you”s like me and “you”s very much not like me.
And that’s why I apologized to my friend again.
I understood that using “you” with him was not acknowledging that his company was made up of “you”s like him and “you”s very much not like him.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 256. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe