How do I plead? Guilty your honor…guilty of assuming first names are a great representation of the person it’s attached to. I’ve judged the book by its front cover and realized the pages within have nothing to do with what I assumed.
Take the name Lee…a man right? A girl would spell it Leigh. Not true. My wife consistently receives calls wanting to talk to the man of the house or they think my name is Lee. I wish! I’ve spent forty six years searching for the reasons behind why my mother went the direction she did. Toss in Lee and I might find myself in Canada knocking other the door Getty Lee from Rush or Tommy Lee of Motley Crue. I was born to rock and nobody does it better than these daddy Lee’s.
My newly discovered sister continues to tell the tale of how her Bob style haircut and name Jamie put steam in her shorts when people would come up, tap her on the head and say nice things like, “What a cute little boy.” What about Hollywood favorite Cary Grant? Did his parents get the look when introducing their child as a boy? John Wayne’s real name was Marion…not to be confused with Ritchie Cunningham’s mother on Happy Day’s…her name is Marian.
What makes it worse is our desire to toss aside face to face time.
Through emails and text messages, our push to communicate might be up but recognition to whom we are speaking to flies way below the radar. This is why I freak out my hair; Jesika the stylist knows of only one rule, make it approachable, unforgettable and up to date, totally rock star and extremely easy to handle on days when floppy humidified loose is the only way to go. Outside of speaking the way I write, you can’t spot the dot in an overcrowded room of circles.
What is the proper way to function after dysfunction has put a late night leg cramp inside the identity crisis. Sam isn’t just a guys name and neither is Leslie, so what happens if you’ve mislabeled their place in history?
It’s time to call in office manner expert Anne Marie Sabath who recognizes our shapes of correspondence as being disastrous. First things first…let them talk before you speak. Not because you’re being saved from embarrassment but they’re being rescued from it.
Don’t say, “Wow Micheal, Michelle, Micky, Mikey…I thought you were.”
By allowing them to acknowledge the error creates room for you to play it down. They’ll be the first to let you know how often it takes place and how eighty percent of the time it begins with written words.
But how do you best handle situations of too many people named Chris, Lisa’s and Arroe’s? Yeah, like the last one would ever happen. Until that day we find ourselves bumping into a landslide of Britney’s and Jennifer’s. Hank isn’t used much but Jeff, Jef and Geoff once met on the corner of Queens, Queens and Queens in Charlotte.
My sister Susan’s middle name is Irene…what a coincidence, my newly located sisters first name is Irene. Wow! Obviously the father figure loved his mother a lot! My brother’s name is Terry; my stepfather’s daughter Margaret married a Terry. Thanksgiving at our house was spent saying, “Not you…him!” Welcome to the age of outrageous, horribly misunderstood nicknames that stick like ancient gum on the bottom of a picnic table in the park.
My daughter’s father in law’s name is Carlos, she married Carlos Jr. and they named their son Carlos. This has to be the reason why when I first moved to the south everybody on the block greeted me with a firm, “Dude or hey!” You simply can’t go wrong!
What’s the best way to handle friends and coworkers who share the same first name? Especially since the national directory at your office features the same first and last name in three or four different states and the wrong person keeps getting your emails.
Rule number one: Double and triple check the city and location of the person you’re sending messages to. It’s not like the golden age of the Ronald Reagan years when we took three steps down the hall and hand delivered a private joke. These days, such presentations could easily offend someone you’ve never met but wow, they have Bill’s name! One expert firmly warns: The safest way to play at work is to never forward jokes or pictures. Quickly erase them from your computer and get on with your day.
But what about radio interns whose name is Jarrod but he looks like Byron. You spend all day trying to remember his name but can’t pick it up until he calmly says, “Jarrod.” This is the very reason why parents should get out of the name business. The intern brags about being named after Jarrod from the television show Big Valley. What? That’s like Mariah Carey grasping her name from the song The Wind They Call Mariah from the Clint Eastwood film Painted your Wagon.
There needs to be a rule…you’re given a symbol at birth, a sun, a flower, maybe a bird in full flight over an ocean….or something totally radical like Prince. It can change three times before officially getting a real name at 30. By that time, the rest of us pretty much think you act like a Bob…so you become Bob.
I’ve always found true inspiration in the spiritual journey Native American’s take…in some nations your birth name is given the moment your father opens the leather drape to the outside world…what he sees first becomes the identity. Sure it would be easy to pick a name from one of the four thousand books available, have Gwyneth Paltrow as a parent and be named after your favorite fruit or become what your father was given through hours meditation…my luck I’d be named Baby who looks like man on Scrubs or Smells like skunk must be one. Lord knows the father figure called me worse, “Hey pain in the ***”
The communication generation needs to shake a better hand. Reaching out includes asking questions and locating answers. What is written isn’t always true. What is true is often never written. Your thumbs locked in text position…think before you send. Know before the rest of the world locates something they never knew. Cute computer names give you reason to escape but in the end are you the chicken or the egg?
Steal my art…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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