The "'Me' Generation" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Watching one of my favorite quiz show, Jeopardy, and Alex in making his rounds of the contestants to try to get an interesting story from each.  Sometimes he is successful while other times the stories are just plain dumb.  At least to my wife and me.  Today he was talking to one of the contestants, Matt, who happened to be a college math professor.  Matt was telling him about his wife and how they enjoy doing crossword puzzles.  "Me and my wife spend hours on them."  Yep!  I hope you got what he said.  When I was in eleventh grade years ago my English teacher, Mrs. Eisenhart, humiliated me in front of the class for saying the exact same thing.  "Me and my brother went to visit my Aunt Doris," I said as I was reading a story that I wrote and had to read in front of the class.  I could feel my face turn crimson and a cold sweat broke over me.   And, every time someone makes the same mistake I cringe.  Mrs. Eisenhart probably wasn't trying to embarrass me in front of the class because she was the sweetest person, but I have never forgotten that fateful day.  She pointed out that when you have a compound or multiple subject (Me and brother) such as I did in my sentence, both should be able to stand by themselves if necessary.  So if I had said, "My brother went to visit my Aunt Doris," that would be fine, but if I had said, "Me went to visit my Aunt Doris," that is incorrect.  Just doesn't make any sense.  I have never forgotten the compound subject lecture she gave to me as well as my class that day.  When Matt said, "Me and my wife," while talking with Alex, I got so upset. Seems that putting yourself first in sentences as you speak or write has become an acceptable part of the English language.  I don't remember reading anywhere that you can put yourself first when using a compound subject.  Do you say, "Me went to the store?"  Of course not.  Terrible English and it shows your lack of smarts.  So why would you say, "Me and Tom went to the store."  Well, it bugs me so much that I just had to complain and the only place where I can do that is on my blog.  So there, now I feel better.  Mrs Eisenhart was one of my favorite teachers in high school and when I went back to teach at my Alma Mater, I told Mrs Eisenhart how I felt.  She had more influence on me than most teachers in my high school career.  I can still remember diagramming sentences to find nouns, verbs, adjectives, conjunctions, prepositions, and so forth.  Hated doing it, but if I hadn't I would more than likely be much worse at writing stories than I am today.  Do you use than or then?  Do you use us or we?  And it goes on and on.  Whenever I hear someone using "me and -------" I try to correct them if I can, but that's tough to do if you don't know the person.  And, it happens so much!!  I'm beginning to wonder if English grammar has been taken out of the curriculum of today's school.  My grandkids speak that way and my wife and I try to correct them.  But, you know what, I have never heard my children correct my grandkids for speaking that way.  And ....... I know they know they better, since we wouldn't allow that type of spoken language in our home when they were younger.  Well, I guess it's time to put this to rest.  No matter how much I write it's not going to change anything.  I guess that I should just keep my mouth shut and ignore it.  Me and Carol would be better off, don't you think?  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.