One of Us is Wrong…

Have you ever taken for granted something you know is common knowledge, only to find out later that it’s a local or regional thing? Or you made it up somehow and believed it to be true but later realized you were wrong? 

I’m not talking about fake news here. I mean something you accepted as true and common sense. 

 Take my daughter, for example. She found out during college that parents don’t get to choose whether their baby gets an “innie” or an “outie” belly button. Don’t ask me how we failed to pass along basic child development facts to her. Apparently I wasn’t a very thorough explainer.

Growing up, she believed that parents checked off a little box on the hospital admissions forms, telling the doctor their belly button preference for when the baby’s umbilical cord was cut. She had actually teased other children at the summer swimming pool because they had an “outie!” She thought their parents wanted it that way!

While preparing my most recent book for publication, I came across my own mistaken assumption. When I attended college at the University of Nebraska, the last regular week of classes before Finals Week was called Dead Week. It provided respite from tests and last minute projects and allowed for quiet study time to prepare for final exams. Many of the colleges I’ve seen over the years had a similar designated study week. I assumed everyone knew about college Dead Week.

I named my second book in the Cassandra Sato Mystery Series Dead Week. Set on a private college campus in a fictional rural Nebraska town, I thought the title was a cute play on words for a well-known college rite of passage. 

It wasn’t until I talked to some online writer friends that I discovered Dead Week isn’t a universal college phenomenon. Who knew? 

Some suggested it was a Midwestern thing. Others thought it was old-fashioned and no one does Dead Week anymore. Some people had never heard of it before at all!

Further research told me that a wide variety of public and private, East/West coast and Midwestern schools still do include Dead Week on their academic calendars. Some have elaborate traditions such as the marching band taking over the library to provide musical distractions (Rice), streaking through the campus library (Yale and UC-Berkely), or passing out donuts and energy drinks in the library at midnight (Georgia Tech and Brown.) 

So while I was 100% certain Dead Week was a thing, my writer friends were equally convinced it was limited to a very small number of colleges.

Recently, my alma mater has changed the official name to the “15^th Week” and written a long formal list of dos and don’ts for faculty and students. Most students still call it Dead Week anyway. Probably because “dead” accurately reflects how students feel by the end of the 15^th week of the semester.

Turns out, I was grateful for the discussion in my writing group. Without their questions, I wouldn’t have realized that I needed to define Dead Week up front in my book. If readers have never heard of it, they wouldn’t find the book title funny and also wouldn’t understand a primary plot point in the mystery. 

Now, I get that these examples have a slightly different nuance to them. My point is we shouldn’t assume that our preconceived notions of common knowledge are always correct.

Life lesson: Not only does it take a village to raise a child, it takes an online writing community to write a book.

I’d love to hear your stories! 

Did you grow up believing something as a child that you later found out wasn’t true? 
What local or regional quirks did you think were universal until you’re realized otherwise?