What's In a Name?

Growing up, my mother always expected me to remember people's names. This was not because she found it polite or because she thought it a character honing habit, but simply because she could never remember names herself. Sadly, this is a carrying gene and I find that I exhibit this family characteristic quite well, therefore, in those most desperate of moments, arm held tight by my mother as she whispered intensely yet inconspicuously into my ear that oh so familiar phrase, "what is that person's name?" I always drew a blank. Of course, not knowing someones name was of no consequence to me, I was just a child.

Names were never anything of real consequence for the majority of my life as I think about it. I lived in the same house my entire life, went to the same school, had the same friends my entire upbringing. I never really had to remember new names because I never really met anyone new. Of course, there was those occasions when I would happen upon that new individual, but the practice of meeting an individual only constitutes remembering one individual name and anyone can do that. Throw one new person into someone's life every couple of years and sure, they'll get the names straight.

On top of all this, I have one of those names that has multiple forms: Steven, or is it Steve, "ph" or "ev?" Therefore, in the confusion of all that, I really began care less about even my own name as well. Steve was always fine with me, it was easier to say, quicker to spell and as I came to find out, if I introduced myself as "Steve" this immediately eradicated any confusion as to the spelling of the name. Apparently it's taboo to call some one who's name is spelled: S-T-E-P-H-E-N, "Steve." Perhaps it's the biblical undertones that form carries.

To make matters worse, my friends adopted the practice of only calling me "Steven" when they were angry with me. Now I found myself with not only confusing, but negative associations dealing with names as well. Also, "Steven" apparently means, crowned one or something along those lines. Of course, then there is my second name, "Jacob," which means deceiver. Added together I am the crowned deceiver. I find myself, if wanting to be a true stickler about name significance, nothing more than the leader of some obscure, un-named hoard of bandits running around duping people. At least, that's the picture I always got.

Then college came. I went far away for college, so far that I knew no person upon entering the campus. This meant that everyone I "met" signified another name I was supposed to learn. I think at first I really didn't think about it. I would meet someone, hear their name and forget it. It was really no big deal. Most of the people one meets at college the first couple days are never spoken to or of again, so I had nothing to lose. My floor, however, became more complicated. I learned my roommates name easy enough, so that was taken care of and everyone else I figured I would just leave up to time to take care of.

This worked out for the most part. I learned everyone's name eventually, except for one. I tell people this from time to time as an aside, but have never written about it and have never told the individual involved about it either. Not that it's some horrible secret, I just haven't gotten around to telling him yet. I got very close to this individual during our first semester of college and I don't know how it happened, perhaps I just never had the need for his name, but I went almost the entirety of that semester without knowing this person's name, and we were close. We had deep deep conversations together, we prayed, played jokes on people...never knew his name.

One comes to a point in a relationship when it's just too late to ask. I guess the momentum of everything was just too fast. I forgot his name initially, didn't have to use it or ask for it the next couple of times hanging out and that was that I suppose. You just can't look at someone one day whom you truly know, who you've laughed and cried with and ask that question, "by the way, what was your name again." I believe that falls into a category beneath the nameless one night stand. I forget how I finally did learn his name, I guess it really doesn't matter at this point. LONNIE and I are still friends to this day.

I encountered something else while at college as well, that being those who took name forgetting personally. There were a few individuals, whose names I cannot remember, who would get downright hurt and pissey when I would not remember their names. I usually wrote them off as high maintenance and tried to keep my distance. There was also a few people who became name accountability partners with me. These people understood what it was like to not be able to remember names, therefore, we agreed to, whenever we saw each other, point at each other and say our own name. I would see them in the hall, and upon eye contact would shoot my arm and hand out into a defined point and belt out, "Steven." This worked great, but then I saw very little of those people as we realized that our only connection was that we didn't know each others name, and that's normally reason enough not to talk to someone, so that was short lived.

What's in a name these days anyways? As I danced around earlier, I never had much preference as to what people called me, "Steven" or "Steve." However, I came to find later that my mother took offense to people calling me "Steve." At first I blew this off, I mean, it's my name, I would think. As time went on, however, I began to think more about what it is to name someone, and the fact that many people, myself included, have been named after someone. I decided that it was truly important that people call me what my mother felt I should be called. She is the one who named me, she put the thought into it, she knew and had the connection with the other man who carried my name before it was applied to me. I wanted to reclaim the association to someone she had created for herself at my beginning.

These days, especially within internet culture, names are empty at best, deceiving at worst and every explanation that falls in between. Between chat rooms, blogs such as this, and e-mail, people have applied and given themselves, at times, multiple names and explanations. I find this strange. Naming is not something that should be self-applied or in the hands of the beholder. We as individuals are positively biased toward ourselves and, therefore, unfit to pick names for ourselves.

When we apply our own names it releases us from a certain amount of accountability and honesty we need to maintain civil contact. It allows us to judge ourselves by our own standards, thereby remembering or forgetting whatever we want. Names used to have something to do with what someone was truly like, or reflective of the tone of the times they were born in or even, as mine is, reminiscent of another, who someone found amazing and saw a way to, to some extent, preserve their memory and legacy.

In my case, this has the potential to impose upon myself a modest level of accountability. In the case of the other naming practices, these should instill some motivation to wisdom because of the memories produced by the mere mention of one's name. However, people are not named as such anymore. This lack of meaning used to be my argument when I would hurt someones feelings for not knowing their name. However, now, as I have learned from my mother's concern over my name, names mean something to someone and they're not to be written off or even disliked.

There is a level to names that allows them to just be. They are because they are in this generation. May we find at least enough weight in our own names to be accountable to others and enough honesty to ourselves to divulge our true names to those we interact with. May we also take the extra step to remember those names who others have so graciously made known to us.

Risk just needed a little faith

I am a self proclaimed Risk hater (Risk being the popular board game in which world domination by obliteration is the one and only object and not the metaphysical idea of potential sacrifice) I use the word "hate" because I have experienced first hand the effects of the game of Risk. To give a little back information as to the real implications of Risk, it is actually the game of choice for college age men going through their mid-college crisis. This is sort of likened to a mid-life crisis, but one in the midst of college does not have the money to buy a fancy car nor, usually, does this individual have a family he can leave as do some men during their proper mid-life crisis.

Therefore, these individuals find the next best thing to buying a car or attempting to start life over again, world domination, in which the outcome of the battles leading up to it are completely and entirely based on the luck of the final resting point of two to three dice. As was said and in opposition to an authentic mid-life crisis and furthermore ironically, these individuals really have nothing to risk so the idea of putting the fate of a population of polymer based legions of soldiers to the luck of a die roll is of no real consequence.

Throughout my college career, I lost many friends to this sickness. Which, again, is why I can whole-heartedly say I truly hate this game. One does not simply lose a friend to this game however, they slowly fade away. Actually, not even that, they first give you a chance to join them in their conquest escapades. It begins as simple experimentation. They tell you they just want to try it once, you know, see what it's like, but it's nothing serious. After a while it becomes all they want to do. Then you begin to meet all these other people, new "friends" begin to stop-by and hang out. One day you walk in and your life dissolves around you as you stare, open mouthed to a scene of a table set up in the room surrounded by people you've never met, your friend at the head a handful of dice and blood on his lips destroying the plastic armies of Madagascar one by one. This is when you know it's gone too far.

For one, who the hell are all these people, these new friends? Secondly, Madagascar? Going for Madagascar in Risk is one of the major tell-tale plays of the game. It either means you're greedy or you're attempting to take and hold Africa in its entirety, which everyone knows is impossible. Even the worst of Risk players, regardless of prior motives, will not stand to allow someone to hold Africa in its entirety. Your friend drops the dice and runs over to comfort you, rattling out some idiotic reasoning, something about how he was going to tell you, but, or, you were fun to play against at first, but you're just too easy to beat. Then they try to make it your fault, if you'd just accept them for who they were, you'd get along. What's wrong with illusions of word domination anyways?

You end up tearing off in tears, and they run out of armies while attempting the Madagascar conquest, in which the owner of it, upon their next turn, refortifies the island and proceeds to sweep across half of Africa, not because he wanted it, but to prove a point, sort of like a "don't try to take all of Africa" bitch slap (notice I said they take half of Africa, another tell-tale play, that of taking half a continent, which means, basically, "don't fuck with me").

However, a new dawn has come. A group of friends from college who my wife and I get together with every week were going out dancing. Specifically, the girls were going out dancing, which left a handful of guys with nothing to do for an evening. Naturally, the guys called, well, a "guys" night and that's when it started. It was all going well to begin. We went out to eat, I successfully finished the "Manly-Man" sandwich, we were all happy and then we returned back home and Risk was mentioned. I could feel the night dragging out, the fun dissolving. How could I have been so stupid, I walked right into it, the word RISK, it was like a night stick to the face.

The guys tried to comfort me. Apparently, this was no ordinary risk. I didn't buy it. I had heard of these new "other" risk games. During the height of the popularity of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy a "Lord of the Rings" risk was produced. I tried it, hated it. Later, a futuristic risk was developed, in this one you could actually take over the moon. No good though, just as NASA has, I realized that the moon just isn't interesting enough.

This new Risk is entitled "Risk, God Storm." I went into the game with not a little amount of skepticism. In this new version, a mystical element is introduced. There are four gods in which one can summon, each one carries its own uses, for example, allowing one to win ties in battle. Each god's abilities are ultimately helpful in battle in some way and not entirely difficult to utilized or manage. Along with each god is a deck of "miracle" cards. These cards can be drawn when a player one, has that particular god summoned and two, they are able to perform certain labor, for example, when one has the god of war out, if they take three or more countries within their turn, they earn a card. These cards have all kinds of different abilities.

After playing this game for about an hour, and enjoying it, I began to realize what they had done which made the game so good all of the sudden. Basically, they merged the ideas of Risk and the card game Magic, and promptly took out all the intricacies which make the two games difficult and not as widely accepted. They removed the aspect of world domination in the Risk game (now it is played in five epochs, so each player only has so many turns and there is a defined end to the game). As far as the cards are concerned, the abilities are useful and easy to access. One can activate the uses of any card by paying out a certain amount of tokens.

This brings me the real interesting point, the tokens or money of the game is properly called "faith." In the game of "Risk, God Storm," one can do quite a bit of damage to anyone at any time with the right amount of faith. It's amazing to sit around a table playing a risk-like game hearing the players say things like, "if only I had more faith." Damn right. The game was engineered to be maximally interesting for the length of the game for every player. A genius developed it.

I realize some may still be skeptical even after hearing all this. I would be too as I really hate Risk. At this point, those that simply have no luck or ability in rolling dice would pose a proper objection, that being, no matter the frills, I will still lose battles. This is a valid point, however, this is the real twist. Risk, God Storm comes complete with an afterlife. Soldiers who die in battle go to a respective heaven. Once in heaven, soldiers can exit heaven to the underworld and fight there as well. Ground can be gained in the underworld, crypts can be taken and if you own at least one crypt in the underworld and one temple on the map, one can resurrect armies. Of course, if your armies die while fighting in the underworld, they go back into your main pool (that's the pile of unused plastic men which sits before each player).

Apparently the creators are still working out the theological kinks dealing with war in the underworld. Because of this, I tended to fight very little in the underworld. I figured my soldiers had already served me well in life and who was I to pluck them from heavenly bliss just to fight and die all over again?