My Coffee Name

Hey.

Let me share a little of my crazy with you.

If I'm at a coffee shop, and I order a drink, I always lie to the staff.

They ask for a name. I give them, "J", and in a way, J has become my coffee name.

It's a disposable moniker. I size someone up, immediately decide whether or not someone's gonna be in my life for the long haul, and  I make that choice.  Random stranger on the street?  Acquaintance of a friend of mine? Another new person whom I'm not going to see again? I'm not gonna invest the time to make some poor person deal with my weird name.

That's some pathological work there.

But I've spent a whole childhood with an odd first name. Four little letters with a host of pronunciations. I've had a smattering of genders and ethnic qualifiers labeled upon me.  As much as I loathe Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People (it's such a manipulative, cynical text), one aspect rings true: a person comes alive and responds when they hear their name expressed correctly.

If we're casually acquainted, know that you're taking a friendship test with me.  One which you pass when you can spell and say my name perfectly, unaided.  Most of the time, I won't correct you.  I'll hope you'll seek this knowledge out in an effort to know me.  I do the same with you.

Final crazy name story:  there's a coworker at my day job whom I've known for over eight years. She has crazy amounts of power and has worked with me in various capacities. In the past, she has done some vicious, conniving, misguided behavior (with the best of intentions).  And she refers to me by a pretty common nickname, clanging nasally like a crow when she does so.  Normally, it's a formal utterance, but it just inherently sounds disrespectful when she speaks it.

And I just let her do it.  I do so to remind me on a constant basis that, despite her current behavior today, there's always a sliver of chance that her emotional drunken rage will re-emerge. I hear this affectation she's chosen, wince, and I remember to protect myself.  Remind myself that this is a day job and not the artistic life which occupies the rest of my time.