For the first 95% of my life on this earth, I was officially nameless. I have always had a last name though. Let's say it's STANK.
Why, you ask?
Because my parents, yet again, were trying to prove they were crazy.
Even from birth, I was being given the signals.
So, the story goes like this. My mother doesn't like my father's name. Let's call him, Excretious. And, Excretious didn't realize that Excretious was a horrible name in this country. He therefore insisted that his last born son (they knew I'd be the last born as six was more than enough) be named with his beautiful name.
To add strength to my fathers argument was the fact that my sister Jaqui was named after my mother. So this was not only about sharing a super-fantastic name like Excretious with my father but also balancing out the family with a mother-daughter/father-son same-name situation.
Of course after months of arguing about naming me before I was even born, my mother decided to do what women do best and manipulate things by giving in until the real time came. She told my dad, "Okay. Excretious is a terrible name but I will punish my unborn child for the duration of his life by naming him after you because it will make you happy."
"Thank you.", my dad said in reply.
So mom proceeded to pray nightly, daily and afternoonly for a girl. "He can't expect me to name a girl, Excretious."
Maybe Excretiella?
Then that fateful day in February came, after she'd endured the fall on the ice in the blizzard as well as some balloon-hat ridicule (which I will get into another time if I feel like it) she was rushed to the hostpital to deliver a bouncing ten-pound baby boy who was doomed to be called Excretious.
Now most people don't get to hear much about how their mother reacted when they were born. You generally assume you were met with tears of joy - at least by your mother - when you were first introduced to the world. I, however, have always known that I was met with an "oh shit, it's a boy!" followed by genuine tears of deep depression.
The nurse came to my mothers room with the birth-certificate forms and my mother filled out everything except the name. She told the nurse she needed more time to discuss it with her husband who was having a mid-life crisis and was unable to make clear decisions easily.
She went home and talked it over with my older siblings who proved to be on my mother's side. They all then conspired to call me EJ. The story would go like this: I was Excretious Jackson and my father was Excretious too, so why not make it easier on everyone and call me EJ for short to avoid any misunderstandings that might happen. You know, when my father calls my mother from work to say he's going to be late because he's having drinks at a titty bar with some of his construction buddies. It might be confusing if the messenger said, "Excretious will be late for dinner because he's at a titty bar getting drunk with his friends." This way, she and all my siblings would know that it was my father and not I that was engaged in this activity. Likewise, when someone said, "Excretious just puked all over my back" there might be some confusion lest we differentiate Excretious Sr. from EJ.
My father reluctantly agreed. He never argued about the fact that my sister Jaqui and my mother seemed to exist quite comfortably carrying exactly the same first, middle and last names and that the children never referred to either of my parents by first names so confusion never really came about.
More than thirty years later, I still had no name on that damn birth certificate. I liked it that way. I felt like Sting...only I was Stank.
No comments:
Post a Comment