It’s hard enough explaining the pronoun issue of 2024 to people in 2024. 

Imagine trying to explain it to people in 1954.

There was “he” and “she” for as long as people had spoken the English language. There was little thought given to people who didn’t want to be categorized by either or neither of those two gender pronouns.

And it’s not that the idea of being transgender was nonexistent.

Just 16 months before I was born, the New York Daily News reported the news that World War II veteran George Jorgensen had undergone what’s now called sexual reassignment surgery – and was now Christine Jorgensen.

But Jorgensen indicated she wanted to be a she (she also preferred “transgender” to the then commonly used “transsexual.”).

It wasn’t until this century – as taboos and laws about sexuality, and qualifications for jobs by gender were erased or relaxed – that people began questioning how we should identify people. While most people still prefer “he” or “she,” others wanted something less attachable.

Here’s the problem: What became the norm is what is generally regarded as third person plural – “they.”

It is more than a little confusing. It’s especially confusing when you first refer to an individual as “they” and then refer a group of people as “they.”

I get and respect the idea that there are people who don’t think their gender should affect their identification. I just think that there must be a way to come up with a better word than “they.”

It feels lazy – as though society ran out of words and decided to multipurpose one.

Again, this is not a discussion that would make sense in 1954. Whether it makes sense now is a matter of point of view.

On the day I was born, my Mom would have smiled if she was told who she voted for President of the United States in 2016.

Of course, she would have also been disappointed by the outcome. A lot.

Hillary Rodham was a 6-year-old girl in Park Ridge, Illinois, in April 1954. What probably would have shocked her that day was if you told this daughter of conservative Republicans that she would become the symbol of liberalism for a time.

The journey will make for an epic movie someday. She married Bill Clinton, a fellow Yale Law School grad. He became governor of Arkansas and then President of the United States, telling people that they were getting “two for the price of one” because of how accomplished she was.

While First Lady, she won a Senate seat from New York. She sought the presidency in 2008, losing the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, who named her Secretary of State. She ran for president again in 2016 and lost to Vladimir Putin’s pet pooch, in part because Putin hated her guts.

In the process, Hillary Clinton became symbolic of the progress – and the sometimes the lack of – toward women’s equality over the course of the last 70 years. She epitomized America Ferrara’s monologue in “Barbie” – criticized for dumb crap like her hairdo or the fact that she was “too assertive,” something you never hear ascribed to men.

She stood by her husband when he was forced to admit his infidelity for the world to see. And while many thought she would leave him when it was politically advantageous to do so, they’re still together.

My Mom was so proud that day in 2016 when she cast her absentee ballot for Hillary Rodham Clinton. One of her great disappointments was that she never saw a woman become President.

Hopefully, her granddaughter won’t say the same thing.

On the day I was born, my parents would have respectfully given the same answer to describe the race of Jackie Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald and Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Ralph Bunche.

Negroes.

The three people named would likely have said the same thing. That was the preferred word for Black people up until the mid-1960s. If you listen to speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President John F. Kennedy, two pivotal figures in the push for civil rights, that’s the word they use, too. 

Describing a race of people, particularly in the United States, has been awkward – in part because this country has the awkward problem of having enslaved or discriminated against that race for most of its history.

Why awkward? Consider this: For much of the first years of my life, older people would consider “black” offensive and preferred to be called Negroes.

“Black” came into vogue during the tumultuous years of the 1960s, as many of the more outspoken leaders came to see Negro as somehow submissive.

Among those leading the way on this was someone who would have seemed a surprise to my Italian-American parents: a recently paroled thief from Nebraska who was born Malcolm Little.

Like many Black people disillusioned by bigots’ invocation of Christianity to promote racism, Malcolm X turned to Islam as a source of guidance and a way to defy norms.

But converting to Islam was not new for Black people. Some of the jazz greats of the era – McCoy Tyner and Art Blakey among them – had either briefly or permanently changed religions.

In the ’60s and ’70s, the conversions became more prominent. Heavyweight boxing champ Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali. Basketball star Lew Alcindor became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

By the late ’60s, Black was the more acceptable word to describe the race. But Malcolm was also pivotal in the next shift in nomenclature, referring to himself as “Afro-American.” 

The term “African American” became the norm in the ’80s, particularly during the presidential campaigns of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. At the Associated Press, it became the preferred term – although the style was changed to allow a person being written about to be called by the term he or she preferred.

After the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer and the subsequent protests across America, the term “Black” came back into more common usage, including the capitalization of the B, which had been missing before.

It all would have been a little head spinning to someone hearing about it in 1954. But the one word that would be the common theme would be respect. 

Respecting others is the first step in getting it all right.

When was the last time you wrote a check?

In 1954, the answer was “this week,” “last week” or “just now.” 

The only other way at the time to pay your bills or for goods and services was cash – credit cards, something we’ll discuss in the weeks ahead, were not yet in vogue.

As a kid, I was fascinated by check writing. One time, when my Dad fixed a toy of mine, my mother gave me an old blank check that I wrote out to pay him – he had that check into the 21st century.

But the last check I remember writing was at the beginning of last month. The town where I live penalizes homeowners with a surcharge for electronic payments. And given that I pay enough for its lousy delivery of services, I wrote a check and schlepped to Town Hall to put it in a box for property tax collection.

The fact is the way we pay bills today would be a wonder to adults of 1954. On a computer. On your phone. Using Zelle or some other surrogate service. Instantly.

Banks want it that way. Checks are more expensive to process than electronic payments – wading through all that paper is extremely costly just by itself. So they’ve encouraged us to bag the check and find another way to pay.

I don’t especially miss check writing, despite my early interest in it. I’ll describe one reason next Tuesday.