The Importance of What We Say and How We Say it
I have one of those names that gets chronically mispronounced, so much so that I have established a lifetime habit of not correcting anyone. Cara. Car – a. Pronounced Cara-ah, exactly as it’s spelled. But for every Car-ah there’s a Care-ah, and for every one of us that starts with a “C” another begins with “K.” Between my son and daughter’s classes at school, there are four – four! – moms named Cara. Side note: this is an all-time record concentration of Cara’s, and if you’re wondering, there are no other mom-Cara’s in the entire school, and quite possibly within a five-mile radius. Among the four of us, two grew up as Car-ahs, two as Care-ahs, and all respond to both.
There are a dozen reasons not to correct the speaker, let alone make a federal case, when one is on the receiving end of first name mispronunciation. To start, some things in life are important and this falls pretty darned low on that list. Second, there exists a whole narrative about how east coasters pronounce Cara one way and Kara another, while west coasters have this reversed, hence all the confusion. Then there’s the fact that name mispronunciation usually leads off the sentence, as in: Care-ah, I know I won’t catch coronavirus from my friends, which is why I’m hanging out with them on Friday night - my backyard! no masks! wanna come?? - but that jogger who just breezed past me really pissed me off because he’s putting me in such danger. I’m going to focus on getting my name wrong? Don’t think so. All of this feeds into camaraderie, a silent kinship we Cara/Karas all feel as part of this little club. This is not unique to us: I am sure the Tara’s feel it, though they tend to only have a single spelling between their Tara-ahs and their Tear-ahs, and the And-reas/Andre-ahs, Lou-ee/Lou-ess, and Lay-ah/Lee-ahs too.
In this moment of remoteness, when most gatherings happen on screens, the name pronunciation phenomenon has become a metaphor for something more profound entirely: impressionability. I can no longer count the number of meetings, panels, zooms, and one-on-one interviews during which my name is pronounced every which way. Even when someone gets it right at the start, if another person plants a seed of doubt by saying my name differently, it’s usually just a matter of minutes before everyone switches to the alternate version, a wave of one person making a swap and then others following suit. Sometimes I’ll have a name-defender in the mix, an old friend who, in an effort to correct the error, will drop my correctly pronounced name into every sentence uttered. And, because of the power of peer influence, this often does the trick, with the Car-ah to Care-ah acolytes seamlessly flipping back to Cara-ah again. The impressionability of listeners in a conversation bears out in so many ways beyond pronunciation: over the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen it manifest in rapid liberalization of self-imposed restrictions, when one invitation to a group of friends to come over and hang out becomes permission for everyone else to do the same in quick succession.
I bet you’re wondering where I am going with all of this naming business, particularly in a newsletter about health and wellness laser focused these days on pandemic. Well here’s my point: choosing where and how we use our words has become increasingly important. With so much noise floating around us, what we say and how we say it matters. Not the pronunciation so much – thank goodness coronavirus is relatively straight forward – but the content. Our days have always been packed with life and death decisions, which is why we wear seatbelts and don’t go 60 mph in a 25 mph neighborhood. Well, the recommendation to wear a mask, keep distance, and do what’s necessary to avoid spreading a deadly virus requires this same speed limit immutability. Just because friends are doing things one way doesn’t mean they know something you don’t. Just because you read one article with a singular theory about how we’re all going to be okay doesn’t mean you can throw caution to the wind. Just because you have antibodies to this virus doesn’t mean you cannot get it again or pass it to others...maybe it does but no one really knows. Just because you wish you could have summer back doesn’t mean that you should go where you please and when you want, unless you really, truly don’t care about the impact of your choices on others. And just because someone calls me Care-ah, doesn’t mean that’s my name, even if I resist correcting you.
And now, links. Let’s start with breaking news: today Anthony Fauci said that he wouldn’t be surprised if our coronavirus case count in the US blossoms so out of control, we could see 100,000 new cases per day . He is begging the American people and I am too: wear your freaking masks!
Here’s an article from The Atlantic taking on the alternative therapeutic colloidal silver, which is making a comeback during COVID . The author argues that its popularity makes perfect sense: “More so now than normally, people feel let down and ripped off by medical professionals… Some people now look at “natural” remedies such as silver and think, At least this won’t hurt me .” But can it?
Speaking of interventions with potential downsides, here’s a wonderful piece about a pair of Russian doctors and the race to develop a polio vaccine in the 1950s. Is this a prequel to coronavirus vaccine development? Even if it’s not, it’s a great story.
Speaking of vaccines, last week the US announced its intention to withdraw from the WHO. One major consequence is the loss of collaboration on flu vaccine development . Correction: the US loses – everyone else will continue to collaborate. Even if you are someone who doesn’t “believe in” the flu vaccine (and if you are, I sure hope you are reevaluating that in light of pandemic times), it’s hard to overstate the impact here because US vaccine scientists will not be able to accurately predict the coming strains of flu, nor protect against them, without data from countries across the globe. I shudder to think about the impact this withdrawal will have. Unless we change course, I am pretty certain I will be writing about the devastating impact of flu in about six months from now.
On the topic of combined data, have you heard of pooled testing ? If not, it’s time to get woke to the future of scaling up efforts to suss out coronavirus within communities .
Some adults are losing sleep thanks to coronavirus-induced worries. Turns out, some kids are, too. Wirecutter offers an excellent deep dive into why your kids may be lying awake at night (spoiler alert: the stress hormone cortisol can play a big role here) and what you can do to help.
And finally, for the parents of older kids: with colleges announcing a slew of different reopening plans for fall, it’s difficult, to say the least, to keep this all straight. Here’s a tracker that allows you to search by college to try to figure out what the heck is going to happen at your kid’s school come fall.
