Too bad I’ll never publish the pornography on this blog…
Occasionally an otherwise blameless chicken will sprout a black feather or some other damned spot that catches the attention of its peers and they will peck at the flaw, curiously at first, until a featherless spot develops, and then a wound, and then the flock pecks with something more like malice, and the gang plucking continues until little is left of the hapless fowl but a bloody red smear on the chicken yard floor.
an endless variety of nicknames such as Genghis, Gus, Dingus, Anus and—in retrospect my favorite—Fungus
And that’s exactly what it’s like to be a kindergartner with a name like ‘Angus Stocking’. In a sea of Toms, and Pats, and Roberts, I alone stood out and my classmates hung on me an endless variety of nicknames such as Genghis, Gus, Dingus, Anus and—in retrospect my favorite—Fungus. At first, desperate for some role in the flock, I accepted and even encouraged these monikers but the day came when some sense of self-preservation led me to resist and I began to beat up anyone who called me anything but the name assigned to me at birth. Fortunately, I was a large and resilient lad and did pretty well in the recess wars and soon enough, at least to my face, my name was Angus.
This put me in a curious position. Part of me still hated being different, and for many years I secretly wished to be called Craig, a name I now use as a pseudonym when publishing pornography. But publicly I was a proud defender of my unusual appellation. The name Angus, after all, is derived from Angus Og, the Celtic god of love and laughter, is the name of a great many Scottish heroes and writers, and you know what they say about Angus beef… once you’ve tried it, you’ll never go back.
I got so comfortable being the guy with the funny name that it was a substantial shock when at Boy’s State, a summer camp for budding politicians, I met another young man named Angus. We had much in common, were the same age, and he seemed eager to be friends. I hated him. That he should have the same name as me seemed deliberately offensive, and to call another person by my name was so repugnant that I refused to do it, and I was inexcusably rude to… Angus, until he got the hint and went away.
It was just such events that my father had hoped to avoid when naming me. His name was ‘Bob’, and growing up he resented being one of several Bobs in any group. So he married a woman named after the wickedest city in the Bible, Corinth—and surely that was part of the attraction—named me Angus, and my brother is Garth—stuck with the most common of names, he collected unusual names about himself. And for many years this made me feel sorry for myself and angry at him. But meeting this other Angus led to a shift in my thinking: rather than feeling sorry for myself, I began to feel sorry for the rest of you with your humdrum names, your Steves and Marys and Daves and Kathys and Jims… with the same label as millions of other humans, how do you people even know which one is you?
Eventually I realized that my father had given me a priceless gift: by sticking me with a weird name he freed me to be weird, which is to say, he freed me to be myself. He died before I thought to thank him, so let me say it now—thanks Dad.
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