She is going to cry. I made her cry.
I sit in front of Carolyn, a mentally disabled woman who is part of an art program for the disabled in St. Petersburg that I am writing a story about. She starts talking about how people are mean to her as tears run down her face.
Moments earlier I had asked what I thought to be a fairly harmless question.
What has been the hardest part of the program?Apparently I had hit a sore spot.
The interview had been going fine up until this point despite my anxiety about asking something that would offend this woman.
She scrunched up her face and turned away, weeping. Our interview was over. After a minute of useless attempts to console her, I told her I'd come back later.
The interview had started innocuously enough. "What do you like best about the program?" I asked.
"Painting mermaids," Carolyn replied.
I had been hoping for something a little deeper, so I tried again.
"What do you like best about working with the people here?"
"I really like working with Jill, my Artlink partner," she said.
"Why?"
"She helps me make my mermaids," she said.
How do I get her to say more?I knew what I wanted Carolyn to talk about. I wanted to know how her disability had affected her life. I wanted to know if she felt different growing up. I wanted to know if she had ever been teased as a child. I wanted to know how she had overcome her struggles. I wanted to know the deep and dirty. I wanted the bruise in the apple.
But I couldn't ask her those questions. Could I?
Does she even realize she has a disability? If she didn't, I certainly didn't want to be the one to point this out.
I decided to avoid bringing up the topic of her disability and focus on the program instead.
If she feels comfortable talking about it, she'll bring it up on her own.But in the back of my mind I knew I was betraying a big part of the story.
The line between being sensitive and polite, and being direct and blunt was one I had danced many times since becoming a journalist. I realized this wasn't the first time I had avoided asking about something I knew I should have because I was too worried about how it would affect the individual.
***
You know you are from a straight-edge family when you are expected to reply to your parents with "yes, sir" and "yes, ma'am."
I grew up in that household. My dad was a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard and when I was about 6 or 7, he decided my sister and I needed to show our parents a little more respect when addressing them.
"Cynthia, did you put away the toys?" my mother would ask.
"Yeah."
"Yes, ma'am, Cynthia."
"Yes, ma'am."
Next was the phone lesson. Yes, there was a lesson.
A simple "hello" did not give the caller enough information. It was not polite.
I was told to answer the phone with, "Reynaud residence, Cynthia speaking."
"That way the caller knows who they are addressing," my mother explained.
Manners were a big part of my family life. My sister and I were expected to learn everything from the proper way to address our elders to the proper way to set the table. Swear words and talking back to my parents were not tolerated. Inappropriate questions, anything too personal or prying, resulted in me being sent to my room.
In public, my parents had even higher expectations.
"Do what the teacher tells you, share with the other children, be nice on the playground and do your homework," my parents told me before I went to school in the morning. "We only want to hear good things about you," they warned.
Although I didn't always agree with my parents' strict regiment at home, when I was in public, I was very aware of the standard I had to maintain. I never went to detention, I got straight A's, and at parent-teacher conferences I was described as a "polite, studious, hard-worker who works well with others."
As I grew older, my parents became more lenient about how I behaved in their presence. I stopped calling them ma'am and sir and started answering the phone by just saying "hello." I might have even let a couple swear words slip.
But for some reason, all their training comes back when I'm in public or around people I don't know.
***
After I decided on journalism for a career, I had dreams of asking the hard questions, digging up the dirt, getting the story no one else had.
But when I started working in a newsroom, I realized I didn't have the same personality as the other reporter. Whereas they were crass, loud and pushy, I was quiet, polite and ultimately trying to please everyone.
I didn't want to be confrontational. I didn't want to be rude. I wanted people to like me. I wanted people to trust me.
At my college newspaper, my adviser was constantly telling me I was too nice.
"You just can't be mean," he said. "You smile even when you're yelling at somebody."
I reasoned with myself by saying that everyone has a different way of getting the story.
You can be nice and still get the information you want.But I knew that wasn't always true. And the last thing I wanted was to be known as a pushover.
I wanted to be taken seriously which seemed to mean in this business that at least five people had to hate you or your work.
So I worked on becoming aggressive, and asking the hard questions. I struggled to feel comfortable in my newfound frown.
In my last months as the news editor for my school paper, my mother visited me for Mom's Weekend. Since I spent the majority of my time in the newsroom, she spent a large portion of the weekend there, too.
It was the first time she had really seen me in action.
We had published a critical piece on the Idaho State Board of Education that weekend that was drawing a lot of attention and bringing me lots of phone calls. We had essentially compared their power to that of the mafia.
As I frantically fielded the calls about an error in the piece, I saw my mother watching me from the green chair in the back of the room.
When I hung up the phone I tried to explain the situation to my mom and why it was stressing me out.
She looked at me. Worry filled her face. I knew she was trying to think of how I had gotten to this point. She didn't know this woman standing before her. This wasn't the polite, happy little girl she'd raised. I wanted to explain, but I didn't know what to say.
When I introduced her to my adviser, he raved about my work and my accomplishments. He told her many of the same things my elementary school teachers had said during the parent-teacher conferences. I saw a smile return to her face, but she still seemed a little bewildered.
I felt a slight guilt creep through me. Had I let my parents down?
***
As I sat in front of Carolyn I felt that same guilt.
What would my parents think if they knew I was making somebody cry in order to get a story? Was the story really that important?
I told Carolyn we were done. I told her I was sorry for making her cry.
I left, feeling like a failure.
The feeling was only reinforced during the editing of my story when Jacqui asked me the same questions I had failed to ask. I told her about my internal dilemma. She told me to get over it.
So I tried again. This time I called Carolyn's mother. In the nicest way I could, I asked her to trust me with the personal stories, the stories that would make Carolyn real.
To my surprise, she wasn't offended by my questions at all. Not only that, but she called me back repeatedly to tell me bits of information she remembered throughout the following days.
I hadn't been rude, I hadn't even been mean. I had been myself and I had still gotten the story. I just had to ask the questions.
The day after the story published I had an e-mail in my inbox. It was from my mom.
Hey, Cynth. I just got done reading your article that is posted for this week and I enjoyed learning about the Artlink service.It wasn't much, but it was enough. Enough to reassure me that even though my parents may not understand, they still cared, and if ever I did make someone angry in the future, they would try their best to understand.
And I wouldn't disappoint them.
