correction

I keep getting corrected here.  I'll say a word, the correct word, and someone will repeat it back to me, but without my Midwest accent, the E's and I's or other vowels less loose, standing up straight, precisely.  I think I noticed it when I moved here, that I spoke differently, but now that manifests itself in systems and procedures; It's not really the surface differences that grab my attention, but the way things move beneath the surface, the differences in how things are done, and I don't think about it.  

But women, young women, have started repeating back my words to me in a way that I ignore, like the library spelled like "Libary" on the schedule at work.  It's annoying, but shows me more about them than it does about me.  

Recently, I started to wring it out, thinking it through.  I thought about one of the girls at work, someone who came to the house that I work at to train us.  I asked if there was a somatic therapy to assist with one of our residents and she repeated somatic back to me.  I said what I said again and added an example, "yes, like art therapy or something that would help her with the physical sensations she is experiencing".  I essentially ignored her, and moved on to clarify, knowing that I know what I'm talking about.  It happened before with "stimming" - my coworker thought I sounded too much like "stemming" and attempted to correct me.  She quit a few weeks later and I deleted her number.  Whatever.

I get things wrong, and this isn't about that.  It's not about a lack of knowledge - it's about that knowledge being presented in a way that's not what people expect, from a person they don't expect.  

There's something beautiful about it to me.  I love what this is doing to me, the way it shows me how much I do know, how well I'm communicating, how determined and patient and kind I am, and I usually leave these interactions liking myself if not more, than just as much as before - a success, in my book.  It's something, ultimately, like a game.  There's something about mental endurance about it to me.  

But I think about these people in the hospital in Denver with a family member.  I think about the foreign doctor that is a specialist in the area that their family member needs.  I think about the way they would try to correct this person, even when their family member's life is in their hands, even with all the years of training and personal sacrifice to ultimately assist them and their families, and the way that doctor might move just a little slower when that patient's call button goes off.  A hesitation, not something malicious, just somehow deflated.

These people can never leave the life they've built.  They can never outrun their ignorance.