The C word.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
A few weeks ago, I rode from the Coast to Brisbane with my friend Ice. Ice is a chilled-out guy and certainly can turn the pedals. Like all intrepid bicycle rides, we plotted out route and along the way found a nice place to stop. The 'town' Elimbah, which consists of a servo/fisho/bottle-o and a few caravan trailers. I went inside for chocolate and fluids.
There were two other customers; a kid of about ten and a bogan who passed for twenty. Evidently they knew each other, and when the younger bought a Diet Coke for his mum, the elder harrangued, cajoled and deprecated him for his choice. The faux-hawked bogan bullied him; "You're gonna get Cancer!" he sang, and stated that 'Normal' Coke was better for you. The teenage shop assistants smiled and flirted with the bogan, and the younger left, licking both his wounds and his ice-cream cone.
I paid for my chocolate and hit the road, saddened and more than a little perplexed by the happenings in Elimbah. Ice asked if there was something weird happening in the shop; I retorted that it was a weird area, let's keep movin'.
Cancer is a powerful word. It motivates people, it scares people. It changes how someone looks at the world. Cancer evokes a deep, primal fear of the unknown. Understandably, it's not a word doctors just waft around during a consult, and especially as a med student, you don't say the C-word to patients very often. Timely reassurance is important; there may be few things more comforting than the words; "You don't have cancer." But almost never, especially not as a threat, is the C-word used in a routine consultation.
I'm taken aback by the idea of threatening someone with Cancer because they didn't drink your brand of soft-drink. I know the bogan's was being malicious not dispensing medical advice, and that there's no limit to the kinds of insults people hang on eachother, but I remain surprised that such use of the C-word is a viable term of abuse.
There were two other customers; a kid of about ten and a bogan who passed for twenty. Evidently they knew each other, and when the younger bought a Diet Coke for his mum, the elder harrangued, cajoled and deprecated him for his choice. The faux-hawked bogan bullied him; "You're gonna get Cancer!" he sang, and stated that 'Normal' Coke was better for you. The teenage shop assistants smiled and flirted with the bogan, and the younger left, licking both his wounds and his ice-cream cone.
I paid for my chocolate and hit the road, saddened and more than a little perplexed by the happenings in Elimbah. Ice asked if there was something weird happening in the shop; I retorted that it was a weird area, let's keep movin'.
Cancer is a powerful word. It motivates people, it scares people. It changes how someone looks at the world. Cancer evokes a deep, primal fear of the unknown. Understandably, it's not a word doctors just waft around during a consult, and especially as a med student, you don't say the C-word to patients very often. Timely reassurance is important; there may be few things more comforting than the words; "You don't have cancer." But almost never, especially not as a threat, is the C-word used in a routine consultation.
I'm taken aback by the idea of threatening someone with Cancer because they didn't drink your brand of soft-drink. I know the bogan's was being malicious not dispensing medical advice, and that there's no limit to the kinds of insults people hang on eachother, but I remain surprised that such use of the C-word is a viable term of abuse.
