Me: (curiously) Honey, have you seen the trash bags?
The Boy: I think they got put on top of the fridge.
[record scratch]
Wait. What the fuck just happened here. Did the trash bags put themselves on the fridge? Did the dogs do it? I can barely reach the top of the fridge so it can’t have been me. How did they get up there? Ohhhhhhh. The Boy must have done it. What’s wrong? Why won’t he tell me? Why is he using the passive voice again?
Passive voice. That enemy of the people, that scourge of legal and scientific writing, that outmoded artifact of … you get the point.
Passive voice is a grammatical construction in which the noun that should be the object appears as the subject of a sentence. You can usually spot passive construction by looking for a form of “to be” and a past participle.
I write this shit all day long: The car was parked adjacent to the train track on which the 3:30 pm train was scheduled to arrive. Who parked it? Probably my dumbass client, but I’m never going to say “Mr. Jackhole parked on the tracks for the 3:30 train.” You find a lot of passive voice in legalese. You find it in administrative reports. The most common example? “Mistakes were made.” Around my house you can also hear “The coffee was finished” or “The eggs were used up” or “the milk was emptied.” (Science gets a pass on this one because we don’t care who chilled the superconductor, just how cold it was.)
You know what you don’t find in passive construction? Ownership. Responsibility. Being a goddamn grownup about your mistakes. Just admitting “I drank the last of the milk and didn’t write it on the shopping list.” Instead, around here it’s “milk, although empty, wasn’t written on the list.”
Why not say “I put the trash bags on the fridge.” Who else could have done that? “The water glass was knocked over.” By whom, Not Me from the Family Circus? Please, Only Other Person In My House, just say you did it. I don’t care, I just need to know where the goddamn trash bags are. And while I’m on the subject of the trash, what the actual fuck-that-you-are-not-getting-tonight do you mean when you say “the trash needs to be taken out?” I know. It’s overflowing the step-on can that we got so the Fucking Mutt would stop eating it. Are you passive-aggressively asking me to take the trash out? Are you volunteering? It is, after all, your chore. Says so on the Chore Board and everything.
When I identify a problem around the house, I say things like “Crapdoodle, I need to clean that bookshelf off before the shit from my old office falls and kills one of the dogs.” Unless it’s the shitweasel. Sorry, shitweasel. Try to stand under the ConLaw textbook, it’ll be over quickly.
When The Boy identifies house chores, he says “That bookshelf needs to be cleaned.”
The issue is, I can’t tell if I’m supposed to do it, if he’s volunteering, or if he doesn’t care if it ever gets cleaned. Then we end up resenting each other for not doing it. Also the fucking bookshelf is still covered in shit from my old office.
I tell you this, Gentle Reader, that you may learn from our errors. When your English teacher warned you against the passive voice, what he really meant was “your wife will kill you if you blame the trash bags for being where you put them.”
CrossKnit 
oh how the record scratch reverberates! Things are very passive around here as well. I think the babies just don’t want to be blamed. Or perhaps our inanimate objects turn into real beings when the lights are off.
In only one case is the perpetrator unknown. That is the mystery of Who Knocked The Dog Biscuits Down.
Oh boy, lol. And forever it will remain
I think in going to read this OUTLOUD to my husband. He needs to hear it from someone besides me.
SEE? It’s not just me!!!!
Um. Tee hee. Science writing is ALL passive voice. It’s what’s expected. It’s how I learned to write (and so now you know why yeah write is hard for me). Trying though…
Hey. I totally gave you a pass, and I was thinking of you when I did it!
Laughter was heard when this essay was read.
Have you considered installing cameras strategically around the house? That way, if responsibility is shirked, a tape can be referenced. Also, just in case shitweasel somehow placed the garbage bags on top of the fridge, you’ll have an entry into America’s Funniest Home Videos.
Wait. is that show still on?
I think it might be, which, along with how old Alex Trebek is getting, really freaks me out.
I just pretend that the passive voice was not used. I’m in denial.
I also hate when people say “the wife.” Whose wife? Your wife? Then why can’t you just say that?
It’s like the Highlander. There can be only one.
I think a little pee came out. This is hilarious! Except death by Con Law. That shit’s not funny.
Pretty sure that book weighs more than the dog. And it’s not like you can resell it. Screw you, Chemerinsky.
Holy hell, this is great! I can’t tell you how much I relate to this. People in my office always seem to think that “things have moved” when in reality, they moved them, and it is apparently my responsibility to monitor the movement. CHAOS.
I’m just going to start taping GoPros to all my stuff so we can see what’s going on.
Hee-hee! We have this issue in our house, too, All. The. Time. Love it!
First, I hadn’t thought about “Not Me” from Family Circus in years, which is a shame and I’m glad you rectified that. Second, around here, my least favorite “it’s not my fault/not my job” sentence is “We need X.” Not, “I’m putting X on the grocery list” or “I need to stop and get X at the store.” You get the idea.
YES YES YES THAT A THOUSAND THATS.
I think you are the first person this decade to reference Not Me from The Family Circus.
I had a Little Billy reference in that thing about the dog getting out, too. I think maybe I’m old.
I am finally just reading this, and will print a copy to hang on our refrigerator so that this lack of responsibility in our house will cease.
Remember to draw an up arrow and label it “no trash bags should be put here.”
Ha. It used to drive me crazy when my partner would ask me, every single evening: “Have the dogs been fed?” Grrrr, yes, because *I* fed them. I tried to include this example when explaining passive voice to my freshman comp. class but got only blank stares. That made me feel neurotic, so I gave up on being annoyed. This gives me permission to be annoyed again.
It’s my special gift to you and the world.