Some of my colleagues asked me for the first time today about why I don’t use curse words at all. At the beginning of the year, I’d been expecting some kind of comment. By this point, I’d gotten used to no one apparently noticing that I don’t use about half the vocabulary of a typical surgery resident, and so I stumbled over the answer. It’s funny, because I’ve heard them exulting over another guy in the program, senior to me, who looks and acts like the perfect Southern gentleman, but is apparently starting to develop the temper and accompanying vocabulary which the other residents seem to expect from each other. Hearing that made me even more determined not to join them; but it’s hard, listening to this stuff fifteen hours a day, not to let it slip out when you get angry.
The really strange thing, or sad, I suppose, is that when I tried to explain that I think taking God’s name in vain is wrong, they didn’t even seem to have the concept that some things are wrong to say. Our society accepts such an amazing level of filth and obscenity in common speech that there is no shame left.
I must have read too many Victorian novels. It used to be that even saying “leg” in front of a lady was frowned upon – let alone all the rest of it. (That’s where skirts on beds and chairs came from – even the furniture’s legs were supposed to be covered.) I admit that, trying to join an old boys’ club as I am, I can’t expect to be treated as a lady. But even the concept of appropriate and inappropriate, decent and obscene, seems to be totally foreign to modern minds. Strangely enough, many of these guys still will open doors for the women on the team. I don’t know why that one last vestige of civilization remains.
With this background among my professional colleagues, it’s touching when one of my patients – usually an older man, but sometimes younger ones too – will apologize for letting quite mild words slip out. I smile and nod, and refrain from telling them that I’m used to much worse.
December 17, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Legs=Nether Regions. Try that one out at work!
Being a covered lady in a professional environment, I get lots of appologies for language usage and lots of door-opening (even from other women going out of their way to do it…don’t know why?) I commiserate and applaud you.
~Anna
December 17, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Saying God’s name in vain, I understand, but all the other ones are simply human created words with human created meanings, so it’s not really that disgraceful. Same with saying leg, the people at the time deemed it disgraceful to say in front of ladies…it’s not though by nature wrong to say. The group decides what is wrong.
December 17, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I’m sorry but… legs? Is it some sort of expression with a second meaning I’m not getting, or is it really about – legs??
December 17, 2007 at 4:50 pm
I relate to your comment about not swearing when I was 22 I had a coworker older than me say swearing around me was like swearing around her mother because I never do it myself. Of course she saw the line your fellow residents don’t seem to – and most of the rest of North America (not much different up here in Canada)
I think men still open doors for women so they can watch them walk through…from behind.
December 18, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Apparently it’s a myth that the furniture legs were covered because legs were considered vulgar. It was actually just to protect them.
December 20, 2007 at 9:16 pm
As a matter of fact, It most definitely is not a myth. My Professor from undergrad told a long and hilarious story about his grandma who was appalled at the uncovered piano sitting in her grandson’s room (It was a toy piano). She was visually stunned by this display of feminine physique. He, and I, found it hilarious.
December 21, 2007 at 12:50 am
I agree with Anthony that the rightness or wrongness of many words is culturally determined, but it doesn’t follow that those words therefore aren’t “really that disgraceful.” To prove the point, try using certain words about African American friends, or certain other words about women. Explanations about how these are “simply human created words with human created meanings, so it’s not really that disgraceful” will not placate them, and rightly so. How ELSE do words get meaning?
January 3, 2008 at 12:53 am
One of my favorite surgeons, now retired, never cursed in my presence in all the years I knew him. I never heard him raise his voice. I seldom saw him in surgery, but I’ve heard that he was a gentleman there as well.
I floated to the PICU one night and a PICU nurse convinced a surgical resident to call him into the hospital late at night to place a central line in an infant. He pulled me aside to ask why there was no scalp IV attempted and I had to tell him that she had not asked for help, she just kept saying (in front of the parents) that it would be a shame to shave that beautiful hair.
His comment, “So she’d rather I put a scar on the baby’s chest?”
He took the surgical resident to a private place to have a chat with him. Probably along the lines of not being pressured to save hair – and quite possibly recommending the NICU as a resource for IV starts. I doubt he raised his voice once during that chat, but I’d bet that the resident will not EVER make the same mistake again.