When I married my husband, I moved into a new neighborhood and I am still trying to get to know people. In our church congregation, we have a lot of different kinds of people of different ages, backgrounds, cultures, etc. As one guy in church said yesterday, "we have the darkest, lushest berries like myself, and the whitest of the coconut puffs in our congregation." He must have been talking about my husband when he said "whitest of the coconut puffs." Anyway, we have a lot of different people in our ward. The best way to meet people is by going to church, obviously, but also through the visiting and home teaching programs. Each month I have 2 women come visit me, and 2 men come to visit me and my husband. And in turn, I go visit 3 women each month and my husband visits 3 families. I have also been priveleged to have a visit by the Relief Society Presidency, and they told me all sorts of stuff about people in the ward. All of it good, of course, but what I noticed was the way they described people.
For instance, there is a woman in the ward who has Alzheimer's Disease. Because of this, she sits in the same seat every Sunday to avoid any confusion. That's how I know who she is because she always sits in the same spot, and always wears the same dress. I don't know why she always wears the same dress, but that's neither here nor there. So, someone was talking about her and immediately they said, "oh, you know, she's the very large woman in the ward." Another person said something about her and preluded it with, "she's the larger woman who sits in the front row." Why do people do that? Why do we always pick their most unattractive feature to describe them? All they had to say was, "she always sits in the front row," and I would have known who they were talking about.
Do we do this because sometimes the most unattractive feature is the most obvious? I wonder what people say about me. "Oh, you know, she's the one with the really narrow nose," or "she's the one with the fat arms." Since I have become aware of this, I have tried really hard to pick nice features to describe people, or to describe them by who they're related to or what they do. I don't have a solution for the problem, but I wonder what other people's experiences have been. And I know that I'm not perfect. I have been known to describe someone as "having 80s hair," and everyone knew who I was talking about. What do you guys think? Any experiences you want to share?
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5 comments:
This comment is from your very large friend . . .
I've noticed the same thing too and I wonder if it's for the reason you suggested. I'm going to make more of an effort to do as you have and pay more attention to the way I describe people. It's hard enough knowing you're overweight or have some other flaw, but it makes it even worse to know that you are identified by that feature.
Well, remember when my mom pointed out the man in front of us with the mullet in the Veyo store? Maybe had she not mentioned the mullet I might not have known who she was talking about. I really don't know why we use those descriptors. Maybe you can just put some very nice adjectives in front of the item you're describing. Perhaps something like, she's the woman with the full and beautiful wart on her nose. Yes, I think that will work.
We should all make more of an effort to improve that habit.
I am guilty of describing people by their features only because I am a visual person and honestly mean nothing by it--and yet I know if someone said about me the one with the....that I would be hurt, good reminder to pick the better qualities for descriptors!
I have also noticed this as of late and I do not like it. I really don't have anymore to say I just wanted to use the phrase as of late, now maybe that is how you can refer to me in the future.
You've given me something to reflect on, for sure. I don't have any answers to why we describe people how we do. I do know that people who have Alzheimers tend to wear the same things again and again. They have favorites, just like we all do. They just don't recall from day to day what they wore before. Some are known to wear the same thing every single day. It's a tough disease!!
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