It’s All in What You Say and How You Say It

The new Facebook aps that allow you to warp your image and alter voice reminded me of a story one of my corpsmen friends told me while in training at the Naval Hospital in Great Lakes, Illinois. We were working together one evening when he started to laugh. “What?” I asked. He had just taken something from the hospital supply room. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but he told me that while he was stationed at another hospital he and the others on the ward were horsing around and talking oddly and kidding each other.

He said, “We didn’t have the item that the doctor wanted and I went to another floor to borrow it. The doctor was present and needed it right then. I quickly ducked down to the ward below and asked to borrow the instrument. However, I forgot that we were talking with a silly accent prior to the doctor’s request and when I asked to borrow the instrument from the nurse who was in charge, she actually had a speech impediment and talked almost the same way that I was speaking with my fake speaking accent. I was so embarrassed. It was much too late to explain, even if I wanted too and the doctor was waiting. I didn’t want her to think I was making fun of or mocking her, so it was necessary for me to remember that each time I met her, I had to talk the same way.”

It also reminds me of a time in Orlando, Florida when remembering what to say was imperative. The wife and daughter of a visiting dignitary fell out of a car when the door popped open. They were from Saudi Arabia and spoke no English. The doctor in the emergency department with me and I spoke no Saudi. The only language that these Saudi patients, the doctor, and I spoke that we could all understand was French.

French was their second language and the French that the doctor and I knew was from high school several years before. It was on the verge of a fiasco with us trying to assess the wife and daughter to see if they were seriously injured or having pain anywhere.

Somehow we managed, but I’m sure that it made a real impression on the Saudi lady and her daughter.