For Christmas at my grandparents’ house we often do a gift exchange where each person in the exchange gives a gift to one specific person rather than every other person. The idea is to make things simpler. To decide who gives gifts to whom* we draw names from a hat.
This past Christmas there was a mistake somewhere (we still don’t really know what happened), but at Christmas one person ended up with two gifts and another ended up with none (sorry Dad). Either somebody bought a gift for the wrong person, or the same name appeared twice in the hat.
Anyway, while cleaning out my office today (I have the day off work for the Memorial day weekend) I came across the two name tags Melissa & I drew from the hat: Marcia & Barb. I apparently kept these for some reason, perhaps to use as evidence in the eventual trial…
These were the two people for whom* Melissa & I bought gifts. So it wasn’t either of us who screwed up :)
(*) According to John Gutzmer, the word “whom” is the formal version of “who.”
yeah, these have been sitting on your dresser since thanksgiving. i even showed them to you on a couple of occasions. can we get rid of them now that there is photographic evidence?
[Whomever] is a made up word used to trick students.
http://thegrammarvandal.wordpress.com/2007/10/21/the-office-whoever-vs-whomever/