For my whole life, well, ever since I turned 10 and decided I wanted to be called by my full name (instead of the “Christy” that everyone but my dad had called me up to that point), people have been having trouble remembering my actual name. Christina is really quite a common name. It’s not like it’s 5 syllables or has an odd assortment of unpronounceable consonants jumbled together or something. It does have THREE syllables, though, and maybe there is just something in certain individual’s brains that automatically cuts off after two.

Sometimes people try to call me Chris or Christy, but by far most of the time I get people calling me Christine. I can kind of understand this in face-to-face situations, I mean after all, unless I make a very deliberate effort to think to myself “REMEMBER this” when you tell me your name, I am guaranteed to immediately forget it, and spend the rest of our time together intently listening for clues as to what it is. I feel very stupid about this because I generally have some sort of inkling in the back of my head about what your name actually is, but I would never dare actually try it out on you only to be wrong. (I once called a friend’s mom Cecilia because we had all been listening to the Simon and Garfunkel song and it confused my brain) But the craziest thing is that this is something I frequently deal with even with EMAIL communication…?! I mean, my name is right there, WRITTEN OUT.

Perhaps some people’s brains will stop at nothing to turn “a’s” into “e’s”. Maybe these people wish they could eat bananes and drink Coca-Cole. It would certainly save many wasted milliseconds when reading or speaking if words were disallowed to end in that pesky “a”.

When I have managed to actually tell myself to remember your name I also do not automatically assume you go by a different name other than what you have told me. If I was going to be that careless, I may as well just use my own nickname for you that would of course stick in my head better than your actual name because it would be in some way related to how you look or my impression of your character (much like Michael Scott does in one episode of The Office). But as it turns out, I think names are important (the fact that I so often forget yours at first is directly related to the number of kids or other situations I am dealing with at the moment, not a testimony to my lack of care).

So why, pray tell, do SO. MANY. PEOPLE. presume I prefer a nickname? It has baffled me a long while. Honestly, if I do forget your name in part or completely, I just end up saying “hey, I’m sorry, what was your name again?” Not really all that hard at all.

{BONUS side note: I would have to say that the coolest part of being named Christina is the fact that I can sing “I am a C. I am a C.H. I am a C.H.R.I.S.T.I.N.A. And I have C.H.R.I.S.T. in my H.E.A.R.T. and I will L.I.V.E. E.T.E.R.N.A.L.L.Y!” If you don’t know the song, sorry, it’s still funny to me =) }

Obviously everyone has their “stuff” and most of the time we don’t know the back story, so I honestly really try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt (often to a fault, David would have said back in the day). but sometimes… what the crap?! People make completely illogical choices (in that they are detrimental to themselves) in an apparent effort to just be a jerk – or elitist or something…?

There are two types of people who make me want to be “successful” in a completely self-serving, egotistical sort of way – the type of person I just described, who, for some reason thinks they get to decide who is “cool” and who is “not”, and the other is the people who actually interact with you in a friendly way, but go home and judge you for this that or the other. There is just a part of us that really wants to become famous or just millionaires or something so that we can thumb our noses up at those people… look, dipsticks, we were cool all along and you missed the boat. HA!

The reality is that no matter how much you may dislike someone, it can still hurt when they deem you uncool, unworthy, or whatever.

If it didn’t, you wouldn’t contemplate all the ways you could show them how uncool and lame THEY are =) In general, though, I tend to come around to the way of thinking that allows me to use those types of situations as a reminder of how much we want to be the types of people who don’t look down on or leave anyone out. (even though there is still a twinge now and then of wanting to be the person who gets to decide who is “cool” – so ridiculous)

{I really wanted to embed the actual video because it is much more powerful, but some parts of it are just a bit too assaulting for me to subject the average passerby of this blog to…}

There are three types of people who I tend to be prejudiced against – elitists, people who already know everything, and people of the white “trailer trash” mindset. Admittedly, the first two can sometimes kind of blend together. People in the last category are hard to explain, but I can pretty much guarantee you that if you are reading this, you are NOT in that category. Notice I did say *mindset*. Again, I am not proud of this prejudice, I am just trying to figure out what to do with it… I don’t have issues with other races of any social standing (if anything, I’m prejudiced toward them that they are cooler), and I only feel “better than” the *white* people with the trailer trash mentality. It annoys the crap out of me that I have this problem because I don’t want to feel better than anyone. I am trying to sort through it…

Back to people who hurt you, at the end of the day we try to just keep our focus on following what we believe God has for us. We don’t know what that looks like long term, but ultimately it shouldn’t really matter because all that matters is that we keep following. We’re not proud of the fact that once in a while we get distracted by people with a chip on their shoulder, but I think we have gotten, and continue to get better at, regaining focus and moving on.