Everyone has them. That one little thing that isn't all that bad. It might have even been funny the first time. But given ten, or twenty, or a hundred times of that little thing, it evolves into a full-blown-beyond-pet peeve that ignites your fuse and crushes your humor and patience every time hereafter. Whether it be a "Has anyone ever told you you look like Prince Charles?" to "... now, I KNOW I'm going to say your name wrong, so why don't you just up and help me out here", we've racked up our lists over the years and I'm airing mine out now. Just so you know, that statistician "Oh, Census Bureau huh? So you only work, like, once every ten years" joke really isn't funny. It never was.
Most of my readers probably know all these by now. They know better than to confuse me with my evil twin, and let's just say that I'm glad the annual Mormon white water rafting trip is coming up soon, because if I get one more person asking me when to pay their money or how great friends we became last year while rafting (yes, very, very close dude, we were so tight you can't identify WHO I AM) I will absolutely scream at the next one who does it. I've come very close. Many times. Only great respect for Evil Twin do I keep from doing it, because then they'll associate it with her and thus besmirch her reputation...
Is it really so hard to spell/pronounce a four-letter last name correctly? One vowel, the most common in the English alphabet (thank you, Wheel of Fortune), a ubiquitous 'N-G' ending, 'K' at the beginning, not a commonly mispronounced consonant (unlike a soft or hard 'C' or 'G')... really, how many possible permutations of K-E-N-G can you have? The best is when they ask me, "are you SURE it's not with an 'I'?" Really, what are you expecting? "Wait... wait... yes, you're absolutely right!! I DID misspell my own last name!! Gosh, thank you so much for catching that oversight, I don't know what I would have done..." I've gotten used to, when asked for the last name, an immediate "Keng: K-E-N-G" and still, 95% of the time they get it wrong. I haven't quite worked up the gumption to proclaim "Keng: K-E-N-G" the first time around, but trust me, it comes out the second. Or third. My most recent "are you serious?" experience came while registering at the annual Police 5K, where when asked for my name, I simply handed her my driver's license (the Lupus Walk fiasco two weeks earlier where I "wasn't registered" testing the limits of my patience) and again stated very clearly, "K-E-N-G". "Keng...Keng...Keng... I'm sorry, it looks like you're not on our list. Are you sure you registered?" I fixed my most baleful glare at her and said through gritted teeth, "That's because it's K-E-N-G." "Oh! There you are!!"
I think I've decided as of today to start screaming the E.
The saddest part is that my name is Anglicized from a Chinese character (in today's Romanization it's technically "Geng", pronounced "Gung"... chew on that); when I went to Taiwan for my mission, I remember thinking "Aaaahhhh, finally!! They shall finally pronounce my name the way the gods decreed!! Two unfettered years of blissful correct name identification! I can't wait!" Yeah. Nobody could identify my Chinese name. Many insisted it was some permutation that is pronounced "Dee". I had thought it couldn't get any worse.
I could start on my first name but I'll summarize... just know that when you put out a list of people and I don't see my name, I'll scan through it again and use mathematical computations and processes of elimination to see if they really are identifying me as "Jenn". It may not seem like such a big deal, but the way you spell your name is what you associate with your identity. Please, all parents, current and future, please, for the love of your children, do not name them Kimber-Leigh or MahKayleghn or whatever cute little permutation you come up with. Be kind. Think of their futures.
My last quibble comes from an old roommate Jenny, who wrote me and said that she is now officially "Jen" because her office already had a Jenny when she started. So they declared her to be Jen. I'm sorry, but isn't that something you do in the third grade, not at the age of thirty?? It's not like your name is Bill and you go into an office and they say "I'm sorry, we already have a Bill, I guess we'll just have to call you William from now on..." Um, hello???
I know you've all got them. Here's your platform to air them out. You'll feel so much better afterwards. Really. I feel positively sublime now... bring it on, Jenn King!
PS I do have to say though, that the confusion with my classmate Jin Kang is completely legitimate... and maybe I lied, just typing out "Jenn King" gave me shudders all up and down my back.
16 comments:
Evil Twin reporting here. Yes, my friend we do have some similar qualities...BYU stats majors, both work at the Census Bureau, both getting our Masters degrees, both have black hair?
At institute last Tuesday, someone comes up to me and asks me if I'm the girl who plays the piano really well in the ward. I know how to play some hymns, but I corrected her and said, I think you want to talk to Jen Keng, I am Kim Mah. Then she tried to say well so and so told me to talk to you...and again I said, you should talk to Jen she is the one who plays the piano for church functions. I obviously didn't know her so I will call her innocent, but still...yet another episode of mistaken identity.
Oh fabulous. So should I be prepared for random people to be asking me for piano playing at random church functions?
Wait, that's not any different from what's going on now...
My favorite was at one Thanksgiving dinner when they announced that "Nelson Mah" would be saying the prayer.
I've got three rants:
Emails that start with "Dear Abby...like the newspaper columnist! Ha ha! Have you ever noticed that before?!" Yeah. I have.
My last name has problems, too. I've started automatically saying, "there's no 'w' in the middle." Still happens half the time, even when I spell it out.
Last rant is about my home state. Honestly, people. Is it really so surprising that not EVERYONE from Idaho grew up on a potato farm? And seriously, "Idaho...U-da-ho?!" Wasn't funny the first time. Still not funny.
So was that Prince Charles part directed at me? Because I can't tell you how many people in Taiwan said I looked like him. Him or Ben Affleck. I'm not particularly fond either, but I guess It could be worse.
Also I just love it when people hear my last name and say, "Don't squeeze the Charmin." What are they expecting me to say to this? "Gee, that's fun, you are so cleaver!" or maybe "Let's see what you can do with my first name."
I also love it when people try to pronounce my name scar-man, It makes me feel like I'm supposed to be in a comic book or somthing.
(p.s. Having first met you in Taiwan and knowing how to pronounce your name in Chinese, I always wondered how you pronounced it in English. Sorry.)
Man, I wish there was a way to go back and edit these things. I meant to say Prince William. SO I guess the Prince Charles thing wasn't directed at me. Ok, Thank you.
Handsome Rob, I would definitely take Prince William over his daddy any day. Ironically, the first time I met you I did think you looked like Ben Affleck. In fact, sometimes when random DC people ask "who's Handsome Rob?" I tell them "he's an elder from my mission. Looks like Ben Affleck."
I'm sorry.
Actually, the Prince Charles comment was in reference to Elder Jones; remember him? I think he went AP after I left. Anyway, he used to keep a notebook on him and a tally of all the comparisons the Taiwanese made. When I knew him he had Prince Charles, John Travolta (he got that one a lot), Elvis...
I think he took the Prince Charles one really personally. I would.
My rants either have already been aired (mispronunciation and misspelling of my last name, in spite of precautionary and preemptive spellings) or go far beyond the scope of this post.
What I mean to say is, I like to take pretty ordinary and innocuous topics and turn them into big deals and rant about them. I enjoy watching people react to my rants, either calling me on the fact that I don't actually feel that strongly about the subject, or totally taking me seriously and walking away thinking I'm a nut.
Subjects of my random rants over the years:
Blue M&Ms
Fruit at the bottom vs. pre-stirred yogurt
Crispy Critters cereal
E-grammar (I actually do feel somewhat strongly about this one...)
Anastasia
Yeah, e-grammar. I hate it. I understand that languages morph and evolve, but this is not evolution, people! This is laziness and corruption of language into baser forms that break down the ability to communicate effectively! Learn to punctuate! Learn to capitalize! Learn to spell correctly! Down with 1337! Don't trust Word to know everything about grammar; it doesn't. Learn English and employ it in your emails and blog posts. It's really not that hard, and everyone appreciates it.
There. I said it.
I have a name complaint- Seriously! I'm a girl- how many girls spell their name with a Y? Its either ey or I. D-A-N-I- my name is spelled Danielle, not Dannyelle. At least give me the credit of being female and spell it Danni. That's a little better. I'd spell it Danny, however, at the lazy age of 5 I found that just cutting off half of my name was much easier than writing the whole thing out anyhow. What's super funny is that when you email people, even after signing with the proper spelling, people still manage to spell it incorrectly in their responses. Don't you check these things? Heck, i make sure to spell names correctly in my cell phone. Its just a thing!!
I've had name issues my entire life given that my name is not pronounced as it is spelled (unless you're a Swede). Unless I've told you 14 times the correct pronunciation, I won't get upset if you miss pronounce my name. However, one thing that does get to me is when I give people my email address (kerstinedwards at hotmail.com) they invariable address the email to Kerstine. No, my name is not Kerstine Dwards. Seriously.
My random rant right now is when people expect you to know things...I work with the little kids at my church, and people in Mexico in our church seem to always know what's going on, without announcing it over the pulpit, without talking to anyone, nothing. I, unfortunately, was not gifted with this special ability, I don't automatically know what is going on, so I show up for a scheduled meeting, and no one is there, they had the meeting the night before. Or, I get a call saying, why aren't you at the swimming activity, you were supposed to be here, and of course I say, umm...what are you talking about? That was last month while I was out of town...Oh we changed that. HMMMM!!! I hate this. Being a challenged United Statesian, I have trouble as it is down here, and they all laugh at me not knowing anything...anyone heard of phone calls?!? That would be my random rant, not about names, I've given up on that, but just wishing I knew what the heck was going on :)
Dwards! I think that's the best thing I've heard all day. hahaha. Awesome.
These are fabulous and completely justified rants... Vick, I totally hear ya on the being clueless bit. It's frustrating enough to live in a foreign country without feeling like you're from a different planet of humans as well. And I know that my name has nothing on Dani or Kerstin... it's just how life goes. Dang.
I too am a bit of a grammar Nazi, but I would be a total hypocrite if I expected everyone to hold to the same standards, as I have never once spelled "and" or "the" correctly in an email (my Microsoft Word was trained years ago to automatically correct any permutation of "teh", "nad"). One of these days.
Keep em coming! Doesn't it feel better to just let it all out?!
One last random rant: DC Customer service. AAAARELKJF(@#$*#DKFJDF(E*#$*F(#*$!!!!!
That's all.
OOOHHH!! Ooohhhh!! rant!! ok, here's mine (as prompted by a conversation with my sister the other day): as much as I enjoy being small and cute and adored, sometimes it really sucks. Like last week when I tried to mow my lawn for the first time (not too badly, I must say), and my neighbor pretty much implied that I was too small to do it on my own and that he'd talk with my landlord about hiring someone to do the yard work for me. Like I'm too small to mow my own yard. Or the time I walked into the recruiting office with my boyfriend, and the recruiter looked at me and asked him, "Oh! Is this your little sister?" And we just stared at him in disbelief. Supposedly the recruiter didn't think I was any older than 18. So apparently I make my boyfriend look like a pedophile now. Great.
dude, i could go for days on my name. you have struggles with your last name and i get "why didn't your parents just name you kristina?" i feel your pain.
My rants:
ELITISTS (applicable to many facets of life, not solely monetary) e.g. shoe snobs, language snobs, humor snobs, etc.
"You're really tall." With a full-body eye sweep. Up and down. Up and down.
Kersilla, I do remember you telling me once sometimes you don't like meeting new people because of the inevitable name-game explaining that always comes with it. In that one moment I did really feel your pain. I think we as humans should just walk around with permanent name tags on. Even introducing myself as "Jen" can have its problems, as depending on the situation, people have interpreted it as "Jane", or "Jin" (I'm Asian, right...?)
Spawn, your full-body eye sweep made me laugh helplessly. But I tell ya, I never felt safer in the dark alleys of XiaoGang than when the lewd men would come bumbling up, then with a "Ni hen GAO!" scuttle away again. Bring it, greenie.
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