Not Just A Name

What’s in a name? Lots of concealment, shifting identities, enigmas wrapped in mysteries; you know, the usual stuff – a reluctance to specify who you really are. In the everyday world where people live only one life, you might have a nickname, but most folks know you by a name assigned at birth. Right Roger, Elaine, and Mary?

Criminals on TV go by Scar, Hojo, Blackjack, and Boom-Boom. Normal people don’t. Right? If you want to trace the long-lost Wanda Jones, you can use Google to find her living in Bangor, Maine.

It’s not that simple for me. My friend, who sometimes went by the name Johhny Pebbles, is lost. It was never his real name. He was running from something. It’s not the law; hitchhiking together, we’d had our ID checked too often for that to be the case. But running he was. I’ll never find him on Google.

Mike the Vike, the Monk, and the Canary were all sobriquets, aliases, and fronts, too. I was, of course, Wes, so anyone looking for me might have issues, too. So, names don’t just have histories; they are in themselves conundrums as well.

The Monk was a failed monastic who carried the monastic life wherever he went. His mission to the masses was to feed them nourishing food. Despite his vow of poverty, his means of doing this was to hang around the marketplace and pick up good but discarded food that the pushcart vendors didn’t think was saleable.

Pebbles was a former boxer. Once when he was attacked, I saw him evade every punch while carrying on a monologue on his opponent’s mistakes,” Keep your guard up! Come on now, watch that footwork!” He won the fight by exhausting his opponent. As we walked away, he updated the poor slob on the points he needed to work on before he’d be ready for a rematch.

Sometimes, names conceal more than they reveal. What matters is the person’s content, not the label on the box.