Saturday night, Allyssa started coughing. Each time we heard it, she sounded worse, as if her chest were trying to explode through her airway. She had a fever and she shivered consistently. Her roommate Hannah and I made an executive decision; Allyssa needed to see a doctor.
She protested, claiming she could take care of herself. She was fine; one more Diet Pepsi would do the trick. We didn’t buy that. I tried first to convince her to come with me. Obviously not swayed by my words, she clutched her Advil bottle and continued to object. I turned to Hannah and said, “You talk to her.”
In a matter of minutes, Hannah had Allyssa dressed and stumbling towards the elevator. We got her to UHS, University Health Services on campus at PSU, and the cute little doctor with curly hair diagnosed her with the flu.
What did Hannah say that motivated Allyssa to roll out of bed and seek help? I can’t imagine her words were so drastically different from mine, yet they yielded a drastically different result.
I’m wondering why we connect to certain people and allow their words to influence us, whereas we tune others out and ignore their message. In this case, the message was the same (SEE DOCTOR) but I’m guessing the delivery was the mitigating factor. I think Hannah used her dry, teasing wit to stimulate a positive reaction from Allyssa, and subsequently she was more receptive to the proposal. I, on the other hand, didn’t even think about trying to make light of the situation. I flat out stated, “Come on, you’re sick, we need to get you to a doctor.” I’m sure Hannah said something like, “Hey. So you’re just going to die on me? It’s cool, I get your xbox.” I think it’s fascinating how manipulating someone’s reaction to your words helps you to change their mind about how they want to act on your message.
I love the title of this post. And the last paragraph really brought the whole thing together very well for me. Good job!
ReplyDeleteI agree with AnneLiese the title was perfect and it caught the readers attention before they had even started to read.
ReplyDeleteAnd you are so right that some people are better at expressing an idea to certain people. Its often important to remember that we need to change the way we try to approach a situation depending on person.
"A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, medicine go down, medicince go down..." Sorry, I love that movie. What's really great is how you tied in Mary Poppins' way of coaxing the children to take their medicine and the coaxing of getting Allyssa to the doctor together.
ReplyDeleteI agree completely how mind boggling it is that we connect to certain people in different ways. For me, I can't figure out why most people would rather listen to the advice of a friend or a friend's parent rather than our own even though to give the same advice.
I can relate to Allyssa--sometimes a friend will tell me something and I'll ignore it, but when I hear it from my boyfriend or someone else, it suddenly makes sense. I never thought of why though before! Very thoughtful and articulate post.
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