Caricatures

The other night at work I called somebody in Louisiana for one of our National health studies. One of the goals of the study is to interview people between the ages of 35-89 and focus on minority populations. Therefore we call larger cities in the south. Technically the lady refused for the second time but I ended up making it ok to call back. Sometimes when calling people at random we run into some colorful and unique people, shall I say! I have a feeling the woman that I talked to from Louisiana fit our description. I can't remember precisely what this lady said but it was something to this affect. (LA Woman means Louisiana, not Los Angeles, by the way.)

Me: (Reciting the canned introduction to the research study verbatim)
LA woman: (very loudly) WHAT???
Me: (I try to talk louder as I repeat the introduction)
LA woman: (loudly) WAIT A MINUTE, HONEY, let me interject this, I gotta get my hearing aid, honey.
(There's a pause while I assume the woman puts in her hearing aid and comes back to the phone.)
LA woman: (loudly) They say if I put this thang in my ear I will be able to hear what you're saying better, now what were you saying, baby??
Me: (I begin to say something about the study)
LA woman (as soon as I begin to speak): OOOH HOLD ON, baby, my phone is beeping, hold on, baby!
(I assume that the woman clicks over to the other line and leaves me on hold for about a minute.)

Eventually I just hung up and called her back and reached her voice mail. I thought it was pretty funny. The lady talked about her hearing aid in such an exaggerated way that it seemed like a caricature of naivete in the deep south. When I worked for the relay center we took calls for people in Louisiana and Kentucky as well as Wisconsin. I don't think I ever ran into anybody on those calls that was as colorful as this lady was! I'm sure she was a nice lady, but it all seemed funny in a weird way.

Maybe she just wasn't used to wearing her hearing aid yet. Maybe she was like some of the older people who began using the relay after they lost most of their hearing. They weren't quite sure of what to do when making relay calls but they muddled through it. When I worked at the relay I wished I could have explained how to do the calls, but I wasn't allowed to. Anyway, the cynic in me thinks that the LA woman was faking it all so she could get me off the phone! Who knows really.