i may not have actually done the arm thing, i said to daniel from work to whom i was telling this story.
but i can totally see you doing the arm thing.
yes, for sure it's something i'd do, i'm just not swearing i did it then-- it may be artistic license.
the four year old me re-inventing herself on the fly may not have needed the somatics, but i, as she rose up in me, could not stop them. four year old me had been confronted with, and for the very first time, something that would come up again and again. her mother had not given her an unusual enough name. the rules seemed to go that if three people in a given class had the same name none of them could go by that name. later this was resolved by the use of last initials, but for that moment in time the only fair answer was re-naming. as four year old me became six year old me she would argue-- but the two other girls have nick names that they choose to go by, wouldn't fairness be maintained if i also went by the name i go by. teachers, sadly, never saw this logic and doled out an abbreviated version of my name well known for it's fiestiness-- period. end of story.
but four year old me was unphased by the suggestion of a new name as long as she could pick it--
if you can't call me by my actual name, then call me rose!
why didn't i just stay rose?
well, i'm not totally sure. partially i think by six i was much more connected to my actual name. plus rose had been in an art class at the museum school for like a kid's summer program-- it had a one off quality about it-- six year old me was aware that this was all legal-document-y and uncertain what might happen if her name failed to match her records. maybe, too, she'd had a little of her cool drained from her.
i think i was somehow better and smarter and more magical at four than i've ever been since. maybe that's crazy. maybe that's everybody else too. i don't pretend to know.
now, this nick name-- the fiesty one-- is still something i have people trying to call me, and i don't like it. in fact, it is a sign of two things if i allow you to call me that name.
- 1) we don't have very much interaction
- 2) i either really really like you, or i'd rather burn you in effigy in my mind every time you speak to me rather than speak to you
i have a delivery driver i've been seeing twice a week for like eight years who calls me that name. he just moved back to new orleans and i'm really sad that i'm not gonna see him anymore. he kinda snuck it in on me somewhere along the line. i liked him so much, and we have so little actual interaction-- i mean it wasn't worth makin him feel bad to avoid hearing it twice a week. i had a similar exception for a beer rep i used to have-- only he called me doll.
doll is definitely something i would not normally let a man call me. but in the specific subset of circumstances, it felt ok. he was an older black man. not like super old, but like maybe ten to fifteen years older than me. i am obviously not a young woman and that fact and the way he said it gave it a little bit of a flirty edge. but then he talked pretty regularly about his wife in a way that made clear that he pretty much worshiped her. so that his flirty-ness took on more the feeling of familiarity. i wasn't quite young enough to be his daughter or anything, but it made me feel less white. it seemed to me like letting him call me that made things clearly cool. ya know. whereas, if you call me doll, you better be presenting ironic. it's weird. but different people can say the same thing and it functions differently. or maybe. maybe older black men can get away with some shit with me-- the delivery driver is an older black man too.
there are lots of things that are hard to define but you just kinda know them when you see them. like cool. like i know i am not as cool as four year old me, but i think i still have some coolness quotient. daniel and i were talking about it, coolness. he was saying that he was a nerd and probably still is a nerd.
not me, i pipe up, i have always been cool. my father made sure i learned cool. like, for example, when i was in first grade, i changed schools mid-year and i was the solitary new kid-- which occurs to me now, but i didn't think that much of it at the time. i was, now that i'm thinking about it, dressed a little off the norm in my red pattton leather clogs and my red hooded cape. perhaps there was a situation where i could have been bullied. anyway, the thing they chose to try to tease me about was my red hair.
i just laughed at them-- clearly they were jealous.
and i mean, even though i changed schools again for second grade and thus had an entirely new group of people to deal with, no one ever tried to tease or bully me.
and i had plenty of interests that might have taken me over into the nerd category, but that never mattered to me. what i like is what i like. cool doesn't have anything to do with that at all.
what did you do that made you cool in high school, daniel asked.
maybe the most important part of cool is not really caring what other people think, i said, but as far as that goes-- if i did it, it was cool.
well that, he said, is the phrase of the week.
doll is definitely something i would not normally let a man call me. but in the specific subset of circumstances, it felt ok. he was an older black man. not like super old, but like maybe ten to fifteen years older than me. i am obviously not a young woman and that fact and the way he said it gave it a little bit of a flirty edge. but then he talked pretty regularly about his wife in a way that made clear that he pretty much worshiped her. so that his flirty-ness took on more the feeling of familiarity. i wasn't quite young enough to be his daughter or anything, but it made me feel less white. it seemed to me like letting him call me that made things clearly cool. ya know. whereas, if you call me doll, you better be presenting ironic. it's weird. but different people can say the same thing and it functions differently. or maybe. maybe older black men can get away with some shit with me-- the delivery driver is an older black man too.
there are lots of things that are hard to define but you just kinda know them when you see them. like cool. like i know i am not as cool as four year old me, but i think i still have some coolness quotient. daniel and i were talking about it, coolness. he was saying that he was a nerd and probably still is a nerd.
not me, i pipe up, i have always been cool. my father made sure i learned cool. like, for example, when i was in first grade, i changed schools mid-year and i was the solitary new kid-- which occurs to me now, but i didn't think that much of it at the time. i was, now that i'm thinking about it, dressed a little off the norm in my red pattton leather clogs and my red hooded cape. perhaps there was a situation where i could have been bullied. anyway, the thing they chose to try to tease me about was my red hair.
i just laughed at them-- clearly they were jealous.
and i mean, even though i changed schools again for second grade and thus had an entirely new group of people to deal with, no one ever tried to tease or bully me.
and i had plenty of interests that might have taken me over into the nerd category, but that never mattered to me. what i like is what i like. cool doesn't have anything to do with that at all.
what did you do that made you cool in high school, daniel asked.
maybe the most important part of cool is not really caring what other people think, i said, but as far as that goes-- if i did it, it was cool.
well that, he said, is the phrase of the week.
