On Monday I ran over my German Shepherd. Her name is Duchess, and she is the happiest best friend I have.
When I heard her yelp, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her. She was under the right tire of the truck.
We had just come home from a weekend at the lake, and I had parked and unhooked the camper.
I pulled forward to turn the truck around on the grass behind the house, and somehow I rolled the front right tire over her back right leg. I was driving very slowly, and I still don’t know how it happened.
When I heard her cry out in pain trapped under the tire, I stopped the truck. I couldn’t see her. My girl friend ran to the scene and motioned for me to back up. I did. And Duchess jogged to her using all four paws but favoring the back right.
I got out of the truck and tried to speak. No words came out. My mind screamed at me, asking, how did this happen, how did Duchess get run over? It wasn’t my fault!
For some reason, I was hard-wired to try and avoid blame. To avoid the responsibility of what happened. And, the best way to do that was to use the passive voice.
“Oh hi dad, yeah, everything is great, though Duchess got run over.”
Phrases like “Duchess was run over” flashed through my head until I remembered myself and took responsibility. I ran over my German Shepherd .
I find the passive voice fascinating linguistically and that in English, we often use it to avoid blame and responsibility for our actions.
That’s the point of this post, to take a minute to hear what we are saying.
Using the passive voice is a learned behavior, conditioning we’ve undergone since infancy. And except in the case of taking responsibility (using passive voice to defer blame) I like it.
