"What's
your name?"
I looked
over my shoulder as if he was directing the question to the person standing
behind me. But there was no one behind me or to the side of me. It was just me.
And him. In that small cubicle of time and space where nothing seems to make
sense, yet everything seems to fall perfectly into place- kind of like the most
confusing puzzle that you've ever made an attempt at to accomplish and when it
is finally completed, you can sigh with relief and admire the beautiful artwork
you so intricately put back into place.
I raked my
mind for an answer as if I knew what my name was. Problem is, I don't. I mean,
I do... I know the name my parents legally gave me upon my birth. But it was
like my tongue was in a knot that I didn't quite know how to untangle. And even
if I could un-knot such a dreadful knot, my mind was printing out blank sheets
of paper as a cruel response like a broken copy machine that doesn't want to
reproduce your homework for English class. I felt like a soda can that had just
been drained of its intelligence and stomped on so as to crush the aluminum
into a flat sheet of nothing. My brain had turned into a rubber band that had
been snapped back into a cloud made of cotton candy that could melt into liquid
crystal sugar on your tongue.
To put it
quite simply, when someone asks me my name, I know what it is. It consists of
nine letters and can be shortened into several different nicknames. I could
tell him my name, but the problem is his question doesn't just consist of what
he should call me. He's asking who am I as an individual. As a human being,
what is my story? I could see it in his eyes. And that I cannot do in a
singular word that is written on my birth certificate.
So I ripped
up my problems which consisted of the birth certificate that bore my name. I
metaphorically threw it away into the trash can of absurdity and reached for
the magician's hat in which I could pull out a rabbit. A rabbit that could do
tricks and eat a carrot or two. A rabbit that could act out who I was rather
than a piece of paper that spelled out only my beginning.
The next
time someone asks me what my name is, I'll only reply with the answer that
they're really searching for.
Pull the
rabbit out of the hat.
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