by Shaun T. Koh

Created on: March 01, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

We had not expected the strange calls to follow us all the way to Ohio.

But they had.

My wife answered a call this past week from someone who persisted in speaking a different language.

Exasperated, she took a page from our daughter whom we adopted from India, and replied: "In America, we speak English!"

The caller hung up.

Prior to our move in April, such calls were quite frequent when we lived in upstate New York. They were usually from companies wanting to sell us long distance service plans, and I was more often than not the recipient of the calls. After the usual pleasantries were exchanged and I convinced the callers to speak English, the callers would proceed with their spiel.

Something like this: "I can give you very good discounts for calling your relatives in Korea," the salesperson would say in the most convincing manner he or she could muster. "I don't have any relatives in Korea. I'm not Korean," I would reply.

"Oh! Then how about calling China and Hong Kong?" Hmm ... The caller was getting warmer. I am ethnically Chinese. But while I am sure I have some long lost relatives in a country I have never visited, I really don't know of anyone to call there.

I declined the offer.

On another occasion, a caller offered my wife "an unbeatable sale" on special cosmetics for oriental women! It didn't matter that my wife - a true American Heinz 57 - traces her ancestry to the British Isles.

Marketing research firms make many assumptions about people. They group people based on their tastes, their buying habits and their heritage.

With my last name, some list services assumed I was Korean. It is a popular Korean last name, I am told. But it is also a popular last name for ethnic Chinese. I was born in Singapore, a country with a large Chinese population.

Laura, my wife, reminds me often of what the word assume really means, and what assuming often does. Take the word assume and put spaces strategically in two places. In more pleasant terms, assuming makes "dummies" of both parties.

But while assuming can get one in a heap of trouble, dropping a brick, as the English would call it, can be downright disgraceful. Classic foot-in-mouth syndrome ensues.

Laura has multiple sclerosis, which renders her rather unsteady on her feet. A comment made a few years ago at a restaurant when we lived in New York state blindsided us. "It's too early in the morning to be drunk!" Laura was told.

Another remark on a separate occasion was equally incisive. "Aren't you too young to use a cane?"

I've been the recipient of a few doozies too. One that particularly got my goat was during my tenure as the bureau reporter for a newspaper in Newark, N.Y. I was riding down the elevator at the municipal building after an interview with the mayor and his staff. I made polite conversation with the only other person in the elevator, mostly about the weather and about city services.

"It's good that you learned to speak English," he said as he exited. I stifled my indignant response of "it's my native language" along with a few other choice phrases.

Paying attention to diversity in our respective communities means being more sensitive and considerate to others of a different culture and those with different needs.

In March this year, the marquee signboard at a pizza place on Second Street in downtown Coshocton offered a twist to a familiar theme. It seemed appropriate to this topic of making the wrong assumptions and saying something you wish you hadn't. The sign said: "A closed mouth gathers no foot."

Amen to that.

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