Cultural Differences: It's an Emergency

Yesterday afternoon, I sat down and opened my e-mail to find the following in my inbox:  "Bus Emergency for Asia Vu, Son #2" sent by the transportation department at his school.


Now, I don't know about other parents, but when I get an email from my son's school with the word ' Emergency' in the title, I instantly become ready to spring into action.  Even as I opened it, I could feel the adrenaline surging through my body as the primal 'Mama Bear' instinct kicked in and provided me with the rush of power I would need to dismember any number of hikers who might be threatening my cubs or their school buses.   Wild thoughts tumbled through my head:  "Was the emergency ON the bus, or just WITH the bus?" and "Was my phone turned off?" and  "Did the emergency happen on the way to school, and, if so, why didn't they call me right away instead of casually sending me an e-mail at 1 in the afternoon?"  Then I calmed down and thought that maybe there had been an emergency that had already been taken care of, but they were taking the precaution of letting us know after the fact .  You know, so we wouldn't all inundate the school with frantic calls when our children arrived home that afternoon and casually mentioned the conflagration and subsequent evacuation on the way to school.  Keep in mind all of this took place in the millisecond it took me to read the title of the email and then open it.


Of course, logic would dictate that, even if something dire had happened to Son #2, he would have been given medical care and someone would have called me or Mr. Logical before settling down to type out a newsy summary of the event, so it was unlikely that anything too dreadful had happened.  However, there is an excellent reason that I call myself 'MsCaroline' instead of "Mrs. Logical."  That is because I felt it would be disingenuous to call myself  'Mrs. Logical' when the truth is, I am more along the lines of "Mrs. Worst-Case-Scenario" or "Mrs. Knee-jerk Reaction."  What this means is that, when I get an email with 'emergency' and my child's name in the title, my first response is to behave like any right-thinking mother and instantly panic.  Nonetheless, I was able to pull myself together enough to open and read the email, which went a long way towards calming me down.  After the usual greetings, it read in part:

 Whenever we have  Field trips, all students on F and S-bus have to take another busses. we informed each division schools. Teachers let Son #2 takes J-bus on this Thursday and Friday afternoon to go (Name of Asia Vu Family Apartment Complex).  It is our first bus emergency, and I am writing to you to reduce you feel confused. We have many bus emergencies, because each schools have to go to Field trips.

I feel so sorry but, we can’t contact with you whenever we have bus emergency. 

After several readings, I finally absorbed the gist of the email, which was:


1.  Son #2 is alive and well
2.  He has to ride a different bus home on Thursday and Friday
3.  This will happen occasionally when the buses are in use for field trips
4.  They will not be able to tell me every time this happens, but don't be surprised if Son #2 comes home on the J bus sometimes.
5.  This is probably the most polite and sincere correspondence I will ever get from a school's transportation department as long as I live.

And, once I'd started regular respiration again, I was very impressed that they'd even told me this was happening.   Both boys' bus numbers changed fairly often in the US due to a variety of unexplained reasons and no one ever bothered to even mention it to me.  A bus arrived, took them to school, and brought them home, and if the number changed, mine was not to question, but instead, remain humbly thankful that my children were being transported to school.  So it was rather refreshing - if a tiny bit alarming - to be notified - in advance, even! - of a change.   However, what really interested me was the use of the word, 'emergency' to describe what I would think of as an 'unusual event' or 'exception' or even just 'change.'   If you were trying to write this in another language, you could see how 'emergency' could  sort of fit in there, especially if you were using one of these definitions:

• an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action. 

• A serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.

• a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence requiring immediate action.

Now, while I grant you that a change in bus numbers (or letters) is unusual or unexpected, it is not exactly 'unforseen' or 'dangerous' or even 'urgent' (although, as a parent, you can only be appreciative when other people take your child and his transportation so seriously), which led me to think about what this email would have been titled back home.  Granted - as I already mentioned - this situation would probably not have been considered worthy of a parent contact back home, but if it were, I imagine it would be something like, "bus change" or 'bus change alert'. I'm pretty sure the word 'emergency' would not have been used.  Which leads me to the next question:  is this event really viewed as an emergency by the transportation people, or is it just a question of translation? I'm leaning towards translation, only because I have noticed this type of subtle-difference thing before.  For example, I noticed that more than one Korean person I spoke with had referred to our apartment complex as being 'famous' when I think they meant 'popular.'  Which (as a language-y person) made me think about the subtle differences between the two things and how difficult it would be to convey that subtle difference in another language.   Essentially, 'famous' and 'popular' mean roughly the same thing, with a slight difference:


famous:  a lot of people know about (the thing)
popular:  a lot of people know about (the thing) and like it.


A perfect example would be Justin Bieber, who is very famous but (according to what I heard from my students last year) not in the least bit popular.   Well, except with tween girls.  And someone must be buying his concert tickets and albums, right? But the important thing is that you now understand the difficulty in distinguishing between 'famous' and 'popular' which have nothing whatsoever to do with Son #2's Bus Emergency.


I, for one, am deeply relieved that there was no actual emergency, and will be looking for the 'J' bus this afternoon at 4.