Ring!  Ring!  Ring!

“Hello,” a voice meekly uttered on the other end of the telephone.

Image via Wikipedia

“Hello,” I began, disguising my voice with a falsetto that masked my husky baritone.  “May I speak with Aunt Ruth?”

“This is her,” the voice at the other end cautiously replied.

“Aunt Ruth!” I exclaimed, dropping the falsetto.  “This is she, this is she, this is she,” I continued in the most reprimanding tone I could muster.

“This is whom?” she asked, clearly confused.

“This is who!” I said, correcting her again.

“No, I asked you first,” she argued.  “Who is this?”

“This is your darling nephew,” said I.

“My darling nephew?  I don’t have a darling nephew.  I only have a nephew who is a real pain in the …”

“Aunt Ruth,” I said, interrupting her.  “This is he, in all his glory, here to correct the errors of your ways in usage of to be.”

I heard a sigh and then something that sounded like a gurgling noise at the other end of the line.

“Aunt Ruth, are you okay?” I asked, showing the concern that only a darling nephew could show.

“Pardon me, darling nephew,” she said.  “I was only ramming my index finger down my throat.”

“Oh, okay,” I responded, relieved.  “Now, do you have a few minutes?”

“No!” she exclaimed.

“Good,” I countered.  “Neither do I.  This won’t even take a minute.”

I heard nothing on the other end of the telephone.  She had either died, fainted, or was merely in a stupor from the prospect of being on the receiving end of another English lesson.  Choosing the optimistic viewpoint, I continued.

“You absolutely cannot say, ‘This is her.’  When you have a form of to be, including things like is, am, are, was, and were, the word on either side of the verb has to be able to be a subject.  For example, ‘This is he.  He is this.’  You would never say, ‘This is him’ because you can not say ‘Him is this.’  Got it?”

“No”

“Okay, let me try this a different way.  You answered the phone and said, ‘This is her.’  The problem is that the word her is not a subject.”