The other night I found myself arguing with my six-year-old about lie versus lay. I’m not going to apologize for that, especially since she brought it up. Well, actually, I corrected her first, but she fought back. (I’m proud of that misguided child for sticking to her poorly aimed guns.) She said she was “laying down for a nap” at school, and I said she was lying down. She said laying, I said lying, she said laying, I said lying--well, you se how it went. Two six-year-olds in an argument. To end it, I pulled the “I’m an English teacher. It’s ‘lie down.’” And then I explained in my Dad-at-Bedtime voice that one lies down to go to sleep, but one lays a blankie down after cuddling with it.
I know, though, that I am in a minority when I tell my dog to “lie down.” I know I’m in a minority who understand that “one lies down on the bed for a nap, but one lays the folded laundry on the bed.” (And later, when one wants to lie down, one picks up the clean laundry and lays it on the floor, and then the dogs come in and lie on the clean laundry that has been laid upon the floor.)
In the shower this morning I started thinking (you know you do your best thinking there, too, Dear Reader). How could my daughter avoid getting mixed up, when the vast majority of adults in her life say “lay down” when they mean “lie down”? When countless people tell their dogs to “lay down”? When teachers tell their students to “lay down” for nap? Whether through lack of confidence, lack of interest, or because that’s how everyone else says it, it’s no surprise that people say “lay” when they mean “lie.”
That’s where the real learning takes place. The osmosis of learning to speak. Usage determines the rules of the English language. If enough people learn to say something a certain way, that certain way becomes the rule.
My problem is that I have this really inconsistently applied instinct that the old ways are the best ways, not counting dishwashers and laundry and staying warm and some other things. But in lie vs. lay, the old ways are the best ways. Silly, I know.
Do you want to know why your dogs don’t obey me? Because you’ve trained them to “lay down,” but when I want them down I say, “Lie down,” and so of course they get confused. Don’t ask me to dog-sit, because I’ll flip those tables on you in a hurry!
Nine years ago, a woman spoke at a seminar in my learn-to-get-paid-for-teaching program. I don’t recall her name, or her area of expertise, but I remember one thing she said: “Within fifty years, the rule for lie/lay will be obsolete. It will be grammatically acceptable to say, ‘I’m going to lay down for a nap.’” Her point was simply that, in English, usage of the language determines the rules of the language, something I’ve long accepted. But...the old ways are the best ways. This crossed a line and I took a stand. “Not if I have anything to say about it!” I called from one of the upper rows in the seminar hall. “I’ll teach lie/lay until the day I retire.” Never mind that I’d be 82 on that day if I taught for fifty years and probably would just be making up my own language at that point, in between wiping coffee spills off my clip-on and telling kids about embarrassing moments of my own junior high experience. (Oh, wait--I do those things now.)
“Well, if that’s your battle, good for you,” the expert lady replied, not as condescendingly as you might think, but kinda so. “I’m only saying that...” blah blah blah, something like that train has already left the station, etc. The blood pounding in my ears prevented me from hearing what she said, and I tuned out for the rest of the day. I recall brooding over my tuna sandwich at lunch that day. I would own lie vs. lay. I would produce generations of graduates expert in the use of lie vs. lay. They’d become bankers, actors, doctors, song writers, advertisers, pastors, and public servants; they’d infiltrate their chosen fields and start a revolution...
And yet...and yet...usage does determine the rules. That day, something deep inside me recognized that she’s probably right. And here I am, nine years later, with a daughter who lays down instead of lies down for naps.
All I can do is love her unconditionally for who she is. For whom she is? Who is she? Dangit! Whom’s in charge of this stuff?
I should have known the battle was lost when Hanes came out with their “lay-flat collar” on t-shirts. The tagline: “Lays flat. Won’t bacon.”
Needless to say, I’m a Fruit-of-the-Loom man now.
