It's Kris with a "K," unless this is about taxes.

I figured something out yesterday: 

The closer I get to someone, the more of my name I lose.

It’s not the first time, I admit, that I’ve had this thought. I’ve often been concerned with the apparent fluid boundaries of what constitutes Identity, especially where names are involved. I got it naturally; after all, I’m no average Chris…I’m Kris…with a K.

I even wrote a song about it once.

It was always a delicious fantasy for me, though, in grade school, to change the spelling of my name on my homework assignments. I mean, Chris (with the “Ch”) was as foreign a person to my mind as a glass of water feels the morning after a heavy night of drinking.

I didn’t know who “Chris” was, at all. No clue. I had no attachment to that sequence of letters. I only knew “Kris,” and I liked him very much…but it was fun to “pretend” to be Chris.

Growing up in Mississippi, you can imagine, I’m sure, how much we get renamed. It seems everyone I know has a nickname that has become so prevalent that they’ve probably forgotten their actual birth names. In my church alone, on any given Sunday, we’d have a Bear, a Rabbit, a Moon, a Boozie, and a Tappy. Until I was in fifth grade, I never knew they had other names at all.

I just assumed they had either simple-minded or unfortunately colorful parents.

I, myself, was no stranger to the onslaught of nicknames. I’ve had several in my life, none of which have really stuck, except to personal friends and family, like Boo, Roose, and Scooter. But they resonate enough times throughout the year, my nicknames, that I’m reminded of this truth: naming things, naming people, naming period is a very powerful, obligating construct.

My ear has been carefully attuned to the euphonic/cacophonous rhythms of what names people call me by today because of this.

The further out from my inner circle they are, the fuller my name gets. People who call me by my whole name, or with prefixes, are people I do not know well. When I hear someone call me Kris Lee, or Mr. Lee, my mind immediately responds to this by forcing me to assume a more political, diplomatic, or professional demeanor. 

It happens instantly; I’m barely aware than I’m doing it.

If people call me simply Kris, I am then mentally cast in a more informal light. I assume I have shared, or disclosed, some Conversational Point, in the past, with this person. I’m not entirely put off guard, or at ease, but I’m not stressed about presentation, as it were. I’m a little more relaxed.

But, then, if you were to hear me on the phone with my family (and by the way, I hate talking on the phone), or if you were with me visiting my family during dinner, etc., you would soon begin to realize that we rarely, unless angry or fervently disagreeing, ever call each other by our names, at all.

Not even in terms of endearment. It simply becomes second-person: Would you get me some salt?, Do you mind checking on the rolls?, Are you liking your job any better?, Goodbye – I love you…etc.

Which raises an interesting question: Why why why why does this even remotely matter?

Wish I had an answer.

OK, wait, maybe I do, sort of.

I think it matters because two opposite things occur. The more of the name you lose, the freer your Identity becomes (i.e., I’m not Kris to everyone, but who is Boo?). And that question leads to the opposite: Do I get to create Boo, or am I subjected to your idea of who Boo is? And if so, then who is Boo?

This picture is included for every reason you're thinking.

This is getting ridiculous, I know. But, do you feel less or more You when someone gives you a nickname, or erases your name altogether in lieu of calling you something generic like Baby, Sweetheart, Son, Dear, Honey, Sugar, and so forth?

It puts a whole new light on the “term” part of the phrase terms of endearment.

And, as Fate and Irony would have it, this whole struggle with Identity and names made the news this morning.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

TAOS, N.M. – Larry Whitten marched into this northern New Mexico town in late July on a mission: resurrect a failing hotel. The tough-talking former Marine immediately laid down some new rules. Among them, he forbade the Hispanic workers at the run-down, Southwestern adobe-style hotel from speaking Spanish in his presence (he thought they’d be talking about him), and ordered some to Anglicize their names. No more Martin (Mahr-TEEN). It was plain-old Martin. No more Marcos. Now it would be Mark.

Actually, the whole thing is worth a good read: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_trouble_in_taos

I mean, what was that man thinking? Names aren’t carelessly given; not to the newborn, and certainly not when you consider yourself using all your wit to rename someone else.

Now, I don’t think the people I know are trying to dictate my personality by giving me nicknames. It’s actually quite flattering. But, as with most flattery, it’s also quite confining because nicknames, renaming, whatever you want to call it, is really how people pigeonhole or categorize a person.

Your name is your definition, whether it’s your real name or not.

I asked U.L. to make sure I wasn’t off the mark. He knows everything, you’ll recall.

Why do we call Bear, Bear?

He looked like a bear, U.L. said.

What about Boozie?

Used to be a heavy drinker.

Moon?

Ironically, it's also known as a Jews harp.

You should know this, U.L. said…and I did. Moon was my uncle. He used to listen to a radio program in which a character named Moon played a mouth harp. As did Uncle Moon. So, you see, then, how the nickname stuck.

Nicknames are often identifiers. My father was called Roose (as was I, as a child, by his father) because we had long legs and strutted, like a rooster, when we ran.

Hey, I didn’t say nicknames were without cleverness.

To be honest, at the end of the day, there are a few that stick for good reason. Either they’re entirely true in their depictions, or they’re just so damn witty that you can’t help but love them.

Once, and only once to my knowledge, has a nickname been both true and witty. After a very long rehearsal, for a very difficult show I was in, we went out for a much-needed drink. We were gossiping about the show, etc., you know how it goes, and I said something painfully funny and ironic, though I don’t remember what it was.

Mike, another guy in the cast, turned to me and said, “You know what Kris Lee…you’re my favorite adverb.”

That one, of course has stuck. 

And though it only really works in the context of the whole story, it’s still sweet.

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I must say, wrapped as it was in that beautiful red gift paper, it was quite a thoughtful-looking Christmas present. That’s the allure of wrapping paper, though, isn’t it?

I learned this early on:  people will take anything on this earth if you just wrap it pretty enough. 

It can be a thoughtless happy, a re-gift (as American as the NRA), a genuine present, anything. Many is the household item, kitchen utensil, family portrait, that I, as a child, took and re-wrapped and gave to Nana or U.L., or Tigi, or whomever. They always graciously opened their presents, oohing and aahing, as if they’ve not used that wooden spatula a million times last week alone, or as if it were a sheer stroke of amazing luck that the picture frame already held a portrait of our family in it.

I'm just a boy who can't say no.

I had this prepared sensation upon opening this particular present, myself. (Although, who knew, it might be a wonderful gift). To my initial dismay, it was oatmeal soap. I thought I’d quickly rebounded with the expected smile.

I had not.

My sister-in-law, as a method of defense, immediately followed what must have been a sustained register of confusion on my face by saying she made it.

“It’s got oatmeal in it,” she continued.  Since when did oatmeal become a saving grace?

I thanked her. Because that’s what well-behaved people do.  I took it home and for a week, let it sit on the counter in the bathroom, adjusting to the scent of it. I’ve never particularly liked oatmeal.

And then, as was bound to happen, I was caught in between real soaps, one afternoon, and had no choice but to use it. It was…rather nice. Smooth after effect, no oily residue. I began to hold secret joy in using it, though I couldn’t have told you why.

It quickly became my daily routine: the use of the oatmeal soap came right before brushing my teeth; after my gargle of Listerine. Every morning, this is how I started my day.

Never, ever did I even remotely think that I would need to safeguard the oatmeal soap from the Natural World. I mean, the soap was in my bathroom, wasn’t it safe from the outside?

And at first, it was innocent enough.

An ant or two here or there.  Not a big deal.  I’m no expert on ants, but I’m guessing they have big mouths, because by the time word spread, and it certainly wasn’t spread by me, one morning there were ants galore everywhere, and of course, that was not to be tolerated.  So, away went the oatmeal soap.

Shame. That.

We were ant-free for a few days.  But then, you see, what happened is that those ants decided that perhaps we’d simply put the oatmeal soap somewhere else, and they took it upon themselves to find out where the new hiding place was.  In their small, insect minds that place became the bathtub.

And that, in my opinion, is where they made their fatal mistake. 

I adore bathtubs; I love to bathe. I love to shower. I have an entire bathing ritual that I must observe every day, and yes, it takes a goodly while, and yes, I may do it several times a day, but I can’t help it. This need for cleanliness is innate and omni-controlling; it’s one reason I caved into to the blame oatmeal soap, in the first place.  Once while on a long road trip, I stopped midway at a friend’s friend’s house (twice removed acquaintance of mine) for the sole purpose of bathing en route to my destination; I’d gotten hot in the car. 

So, as you may imagine, to come between me and my bathing is a capital offence.

Furthermore, I will admit that I was naive in my initial attack against the ants. I’d had no previous beef with ants, I didn’t know their martyred ways of constant, constant coming and coming and coming.

We both learned quickly, though.

So, anyway, there, in plain view, a few days later, was the typical slightly curved solid line of ants down the corner of the wall and onto the cold edge of the tub, stretching out from the base of the corner to the Pomegranate and Mango Body Shampoo, positioned ever so preciously unaware on the other side of the bathtub.  I took several hand-wound layers of toilet paper and annihilated the entire string of them. 

C’est la vie, I said to myself, giddy at having found an opportunity to incorporate a French phrase into some part of my day. Isn’t that the mark of the wealthy, to pepper dialogue, even monologue, with French? Triumphant, I settled into my bath, with my New Yorker, and continued to giggle, this time over the horrendous choices the poetry editor had made (such awful poems in The New Yorker, really, just sad; I need to call him or her). 

The following morning (and in tangent here I should point out that I do not do mornings) there they were again.  I was mortified.  How stupid is the ant!  Did they not realize the evening before that some of their own did not return home?  That their brothers, daughters, neighbors had been killed?  I had killed an entire line of ants the night before, and this new string of ants, I mean, had none of them noticed?  What, were they like, sitting at church going, “Hmm, wonder where Nancy and Peter are?  Not like them to miss church?” (I’d killed the ant string on a Sunday evening, hence the church reference).  Was the ant indeed this daft?

I mean, good gracious!  The stubbornness of the ant is boggling to the human mind.  And that’s when it hit me.  See, ants relay information to other ants through chemical releases (http://www.cell.com/current-biology/retrieve/pii/S0960982206018343), and after watching them, up close, I’d like to personally add that they also communicate through the movement of their bodies and antennae, much like the honeybee (I’m making this part up, naturally, but still, it’s my blog), and so, like the honeybee they are able to discuss and determine what’s going on, who’s gotten married, who’s been fired, who’s going to graduate school, etc. by simply gyrating their thoraxes in a cloud of chemicals (or it may be thoraces) vigorously in several directions (I am still making this part up). 

See, when I killed that string of ants the night before, I’d made the mistake; I had left no warning to the other ants by leaving behind a few dead bodies.  Having seen none, they probably just assumed that the other ants had gone on back home, had done their jobs, gotten off early, whatever.

Well, that was fine and all for last night, then, but not this time, I told myself. 

No, sir, not this time.  This time I was going to give the ants a bit of an alcohol problem, rubbing, not drinking.  If the ants wanted to talk through body language, then I was going to give them something to say.  I wrapped my finger around a Bounty napkin, dipped the edge of it in isopropyl and crushed ant after ant after ant…but just a few, and scattered along their visible Maginot line.  That’s where the beauty of my plan lay.

See, what would happen now is that the following ant would come across this isopropylized dead ant and create a panic unlike any ever seen before in the ant world that would ripple up and down the ant line, like a busy signal.  It was going to be a message they would understand loud and clear. 

I stood back and watched.  I could almost hear the panic taking shape through little conversations that I started making up for the ants’ reactions as each one discovered the dead body of another.

Whoa!  Oh god, oh god, oh god, Betsy’s down!!  Oh god, god, she’s down!  She’s, I don’t know, she’s like completely unresponsive!!  Tell James.  Oh god, oh god, she’s dead.  Move it!! Get out of here!!

Sweet Jerusalem! Roger isn’t moving.  Roger?  Roger?  Wait, no, no, nothing about this makes sense, something’s not right.  Roger!?  Oh sweet mother of pearl, he is flat out dead.  Heaves above!! Get the hell out of here…call Moody, he’s got to know, he’s got to warn the others!!

No!! No!  You bastards!! Not Emily…no, no, no, no…she was was too young, she was too young…no, no, no…

Now, replace that sandwich with a bathtub, please.

It was pure terror, mania, ants were going crazy. But, they didn’t retreat. No. They put up a united front and kept on coming, by the veritable dozens.  Dozens…

So, I waited awhile and let them all group themselves together by skill, gender, or whatever categories they were utilizing, and then I turned the shower head on them and washed them down the drain.

After that, it become a daily war.  Wake up, take a shower, turn the shower head on the ants, dress, brush my teeth, turn the shower head back on the ants, and go to work. I called pest control when gnats, after absolutely nowhere, started showing up with the ants; it was all just too, too much.

I appreciate that persistence has no pesticide, at least in its intention, but I couldn’t allow for insects to have such truisms, not in my bathroom.

So, I did what anyone would have done, and probably done before it’d gotten this far: I called Orkin.

And then…my sister-in-law.

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I call this, for lack of a better explanation, the Crawdad Convo Back Slap, a southern-fried term, but nevertheless. 

This, in layman’s terms, is how it goes: (that’s right, I’m using a colon after a verb – if it bothers you, check back a few blogs for the reason)

So, you’re talking to someone, you know, wherever, and you’re being quite nice, even though deep inside you’re relatively in a hurry, but due to the pressure of social obligation, you’re standing there talking to this person…usually, it seems it’s always a boring person, and not at all the good kind of droll (there are some boring people who are, somehow, still droll), and then, there’s this awkward pause because – listen – no one really talks at length to anyone anymore.

Either use it or leave the door closed.

I mean, if it’s someone you already know very well, what’s the point, right?  Everything is more of an inside joke spoken in outside voices, so as to be heard by those not in on the joke…and if it’s someone you only know peripherally, well, you have to speak carefully in order to keep them on the periphery, correct?  So…so it’s someone, on the cusp, ok?, one foot firmly on the periphery (and they know that’s where they really stand, let’s keep that in mind), and another foot pressed sloppily on the rim of the inside joke; they’re trying desperately to get a firm foothold…and you’re engrossed in a secondarily unimportant conversation with this person about who knows what, you have no idea, you’re not really hearing a word they say; you’re just listening for general cues: weather, busy calendar, faculty meeting, happy hour, and so on… 

…and then…

…that truly awkward, last pause, where it’s now or never, you know?, and so, you bite, you take the chance and you say, “Well, I better go, etc. etc.” and then they have the nerve to say,”Oh yes, me too, I’ve got to be getting on to the grocery store, anyway.”

How dare they. 

They don’t get the right to also have to be getting along…

I’m the one who had to stop and entertain them in inane dialogue; I was the one who had other things I had to go and do but No, I stopped and chatted.  And, now, they summon up some half-breed nerve to say, “Well I have such and such to do anyway!,” as if it were my fault their day was brought to a complete and utter dud end, shall we?  Now, all of a sudden, their routine is important again!  I think not!  No.  I was the one; it was I…I was the one who was put entirely out by this unnecessary gab fest…so no sir, you do not have something else that was so urgent that you “postponed” it to talk to me.  It is entirely the other way around…(of course, I keep all this inside, but boy, do I let it simmer).

No, what I do, instead, on the outside, is this: I just stretch it out.  I just keep right on talking, about anything, Abe Lincoln roses, flow charts, cole slaw, anything to deter them. Anything.

Because they will not be the boss of me, or my time…especially not at the tail-end of time wasted. 

And that, my friends, is called the Crawdad Convo Back Slap: funny name, awful mood killer.

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Whether I like it or not, I am just not me without these frames.  

 

It is no secret that I cannot see well.  Now, there might be some other mystery about me that is less recognizable or understood (such as why I detest feet so), but sight?  No mystery there.  Starting in third, or fourth, grade, maybe, for some reason unknown to me, my eyes began to betray me, sometimes with less than desirable results.  (I feel betrayed only when I forget to wear my glasses, and you would think for someone who couldn’t see without them, that that would never happen.  But, you would be wrong to assume this, my friend, quite wrong, indeed).  

 

Once when I was eight, I fully brushed my teeth with Cortizone-10.  I could not taste anything for about three and a half days. Still, we consider that more of a developmentally-challenged accident rather than a simple one, like, that I needed glasses.

 

I swear I could hear the ocean.

When I was eleven, I followed behind the wrong woman who coincidentally had the same shade of Firehouse Red hair, as my aunt, (as far as I could tell anyway) down three aisles at Piggly Wiggly.  It wasn’t until we got to the bananas that she asked me why I was following her.  It might be sadder to comment on the fact that my aunt hadn’t, actually, missed me.

 

And still, to this day, I make stupid mistakes. This morning for instance, I styled my hair with shampoo.  Note:  Because my hair has a tendency to grow out into luscious, enviable curls, during the summer months, I often style it with just a tiny dab of conditioner; let’s call it one of my trade secrets.  But it was not so this morning.  I lathered up, already dressed for church, and thought I was losing my mind when foam began to form at my fingertips.  It is never comfortable to rinse your hair when you are already dressed. It’s also never comfortable to only be able to vaguely see that foam appears to be coming out of your fingertips.  Those of you who wear glasses know what a mess it would have been to have then rushed to put on your glasses to try and make sense of such a situation. 

 

Because I’ve worn glasses since the third, or fourth, grade, maybe, I have developed into something of a premature curmudgeon.  (i.e., when I take my glasses off, I can no longer hear as well as when I’m wearing them).  Oh, I’ve tried to incorporate glassitude, as I call it, where I dramatically belabor a point by chewing ever so delicately on the tip of one of the arms of my glasses.  Or legs.  I can’t recall what the appropriate term is, hence my failure at having any glassitude.  Mainly, I just get overheated in a conversation and somehow manage to whack myself in the head during some particular climax and send my glasses flying off into the faces of the unsuspecting.  (Once I actually hit myself in the face so hard, my glasses flew over the bar and into the garbage can, at a favorite restaurant of mine).  That’s how they know me, now.  Oh look, here comes Loose Lee Lenses – put him by the plants.

 

The doctor told me I had Acute Myopia Dysphoria Utopia, or some similar something that sounded dreadfully romantic and, also, at the same time incomprehensible to the human mind.  I had no idea that I personally had the capacity of possessing so dramatic a disease.  And all of it, right there in my two little eyes.  Two eyes that, up until then, had been described as dangerously beautiful, tauntingly alluring. Now, they were basically done with all that, apparently, and were heading into retirement, taking my vision with them. (The little turn-coats). The doctor told me a) my vision would lessen each year by a few degrees [How exciting!] and b) that I was basically borderline legally blind which led me to say, What?  I mean, what does that even mean?  I’ve never understood how one can borderline a disease?  They say that about people like me, or diabetics. 

 

Tell me, please, enlighten me: Is there some Checkpoint Charlie in the internal genetic world of diseases that I’m not aware of?  As if one could stand at a barbed wire fence sectioning off those with diabetes and those without, (maybe it’s stationed at in the duodenum; I’ve never known what its purpose is anyway) and then one could merely glance over said duodenumal fence and consider the alternative – Hmm, I don’t think I’ll put one toe over there in Diabetes Land today…no, I’ll just stand at the border and mock the liver.

 

It’s a bit like faulty hope, like one day, I’m going to be able to wake up and say Enough with the borderline!  Today I reclaim my vision.  A borderline suggests the possibility of running away, in the opposite direction, doesn’t it?  I guarantee there is no borderline in sight for the passengers in my car, should I so choose to drive without my glasses.  They could tell you right quickly where the border ends, and begins.  

 

I just can’t stand not being able to see, though; well, that sounds like sour grapes to those with truer defects, but it’s such a joke to be so dependent on glasses, at my level of sight issues.  Especially when the migraines start, with their hieroglyphics.  Those are the kinds of migraines I get, with the hieroglyphics, and it wouldn’t be so bad if somehow I could temporarily have the ability to read Egyptian when the migraines occurred, but that has never happened, not even once, not even by accident.   

 

I can’t tell you how many walls and doors I’ve run into.  I can’t tell how you many hallucinations I’ve had (these, admittedly, might not be the result of bad vision, but still)…I can’t tell you how much of my personality bad vision has destroyed or, even, determined. 

 

So, I guess you can put me on the wall with the rest of the pictures because ‘what you see is’ well, probably more than I ever will. 

 

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