Joy & Pain

February 3, 2010 · Filed under & random things., has issues. · Tagged joy, name calling, pay attention

Joy and pain. It’s like sunshine and rain.  I think that was a song of sorts from the 80’s.  But I don’t really recall much more than that.  I am not an MC.  I am a very, very white girl.  And apparently so plain-vanilla that people cannot remember my name. 

This bugs me.  This irks me.  This makes me C-R-A-Z-Y. 

I’ve been called a lot of names in my life. Like Jezebel or Fireball Head.  And despite what you think, those were mean, not funny. My name starts with a “J” and I have red hair.  I guess you can’t expect too much more out of elementary school kids.  And I’ve probably been called some downright nasty things too.  But none of those get to me worse than “Joy”. 

Now Joy is a perfectly sweet and nice name.  But it isn’t my name.  My name isn’t anything remotely close to J-O-Y.  And this isn’t something that happens once in a while.  It happens all the time.  Usually by business people.  Often right after they have listened to my voice mail message that very clearly states my name.  And that irks me even more.  C’mon people.  Let’s brush up on our professionalism.  It shows that A) you just aren’t paying attention; and B) well…you aren’t paying attention.

Now of course I know that it is just that they are taking a little of my first name (like the first letter) and mixing it with a couple of letters from my last name.  But over, and over, and over again.  From seemingly unrelated individuals.  Weird. 

Maybe I should embrace it.  Kind of like a single-named celebrity.  Prince, Madonna, Elvis.  But “Joy – the pie mistress” just doesn’t fit me.

So what do you hate being called?