Notes from the Worthless, Wide-Necked Naming Novice Drama Queen

"She has a wide neck." This statement was inserted in the middle of the write-up I got in the mail from my neurologist. I was reading along, with vague amusement, his version of the things I'd told him about my symptoms and family history and his assessment of my condition, when I came across that statement, which seemed to come out of nowhere.

Really? I wondered. I walked into the bathroom to check out my wide neck in the mirror. My neck didn't look wide. It looked the same as it always does. It's there to hold up my head, and, thankfully, I don't have to think about it much beyond that. I turned a little bit this way, then that way. I wouldn't call it a skinny neck, but I wouldn't call it a wide neck, either. When I was in really good shape from weight lifting, my neck might have been slightly wide, as it was as muscular as everything else. But, alas, that was years ago.

I checked the write-up for context. Maybe having a wide neck meant I did or didn't have some kind of syndrome, or was medically significant in some other way. If there was context, I missed it. The statement was just simply stuck between a discussion of how many of my relatives had similar medical issues and that I appeared to be my stated age (now that hurt).

For the most part, I forgot about it.

Then, I found a cool website that shows you how popular different given names have been over the past century. I amused myself with putting in names like Stephen and Douglas, then watching them get dwarfed on the graph by the mega-popular name David. This site was so much fun for me that I found myself exploring its other information and taking a quiz.

I've been interested in and studied names since I was a little girl. I'm pretty familiar with the history and popularity of various names. I kept a list of names I liked to which I added and subtracted as I grew up. I had my own children named long before they were born.

But, at the end of taking this 10-question quiz, I was informed that I was a "naming novice." Okay, there were a couple of things that I had not been sure about and had guessed on--and they had nothing to do with the history of given names in America, by the way, but naming novice? There could hardly be a more insulting allegation about me! After all, there are seven people walking around on this planet whom I named.

So, I did some research on the things I didn't know and took the quiz again. I may have gotten carried away and taken the quiz ten or twelve times. No matter what I changed the answers to, the result was the same. "You are a naming novice." I finally concluded that, not only had the person who created the quiz probably not named seven people, he also didn't know what the word "novice" means.

That experience also failed to affect my opinion of myself.

Then I found out someone's been waiting twenty-one years to call me a drama queen, based on a necessary flight I made from an ex that long ago. Because this person has been loved by me since I've known her, I gave more thought to this characterization. There's no question that things were dramatic back then, although that was not my idea, and I was so reluctant to tell anyone anything that no one knew of my plight until a sister gently dragged it out of me. Nevertheless, this person is entitled to her opinion.

We all have blind spots, and I could be missing things about myself, just like everyone sometimes does, but I do self-examine. Probably too much. I hardly ever have an interaction with anyone after which, unless I'm sure my behavior was Miss Manners perfect, I don't review it and wonder what I could have done better.

I harass my best friends and husband all the time with questions about my role in interactions. Ask them.

I do know a person or two who never self-evaluate. They are always the hero or victim in every story they tell, and even something like picking out the napkins for a party can be a huge, interesting (so they assume) ordeal. (Now, there's a drama queen.) People like this can never see their role in conflicts. Their polarization of their own roles leaves little room for them to be just humans, humbly doing their best and learning as they go.

So, I guess when I'm through sorting through the question of how much our self-image comes from within and how much it comes from other people's opinions of and behavior toward us, I'll slough this one off, also. If I can gather truth from it, maybe it will change me for the better.

If there is no truth in someone's evaluation of you and you spend too much time on it, though, it could do harm. There has to be a balance.

Someone anonymously texted me a while ago the words, "You know you're worthless. Why don't you just kill yourself?" No, that's not the kind of friend I cultivate. In fact, no one texts me. It was possibly something that got lost on its way through cyberspace. And it was definitely something that I didn't feel described me at all. After much thought and a little good advice, I responded, "It's sure good to know that you're alive." I mean, that sort of statement has to be about the sender's struggles. It sure wasn't reflective of anything in me.

And so, many of the messages we receive from others are about them, not us. We need to strengthen our inner judgment to where we can tell what to incorporate from feedback and what to ignore.

As we sift past and move around each other, we inescapably affect each other. I think this is the way it's supposed to be. We constantly have the opportunity to supply truth. Sometimes it's needed, and hard to do. Just as important, I think, is the opportunity to bring the grace and mercy of a needed kindness to a person. Which can be even harder to do. But it can make sensitive people reflect just as much, and less defensively, than a harsh truth can.