I drive by the big billboard that says
in four-foot-tall Times New Roman:

Who adopted who?
and the old English professor in me

blurts in the car, before I can stop myself,
Whom! Who adopted whom!

I knew I needed to retire when, one
sparkling morning in a writing class,

I explained this picky grammar distinction
for the approximately 12,745th time—

the subject who does the action;
the object whom receives it.

You wouldn’t say, She adopted she,
would you? No? She adopted her, yes?

Well, her and him and them and whom
are all objects. All receive action done

unto them… When about this time that
student in the back row piped up with,

Who said it has to be whom?
Why can’t it just always be who?

And for the first time I heretically thought,
Yeah, why not? Why sometimes

farther and other times further?
Why sometimes less, sometimes fewer?

I mean, seriously, said the student.
Does it really matter in this crazy world?

And I thought, nope, you know, it really
doesn’t in the great scheme of things.

We have fussed far too long over stuff
we don’t need to, and usage morphs

over time anyway. Someday, I told them,
whom will fossilize like a dinosaur,

and you will happily go who-ing
through the rest of your long lives.

And it will not matter, not one whit.
So if you happen to think of your

old fart grammar professor whom-ing
you in the distant past, know that

I will be smiling upon you from my
spot in the grammar-verse, you,

who* I greatly admire, you little
linguistic rabble-rouser, you.

•••

*Yeah, that last “who” should really be “whom.”
Can’t help myself.