I’ve heard that you shouldn’t criticize someone until you walk a mile in their shoes but what if they’re a different size than you and the shoes squish your toes or they like penny loafers when you’re a Doc Maartens guy or they might actually have athlete’s foot or smelly feet or just have the pair with the hole in the bottom like in old timey movies. I get the phrase ‘walk a mile in their shoes’ and I know what it’s trying to say, I just think it does a really crappy job of saying it.
There is one Starbucks in particular, where a certain do gooder takes these rules to the nth degree. This wasn’t just the one time and she is always very adamant about not placing my order until I had given her my name which is not Lorenzo but that’s the name I gave her. Our conversation went something like this:
Me: I’d like a grande soy chai.
Her: Okay, name please?
Me: Name?
Her: Yes, I need your name to place the order (as she put sharpie to cup).
Me: But I’m the only one here.
Her: I still need a name.
Me: But there’s no one else in the store. Who’s drink would it be?
Her: It’s store policy. I can’t place your order without a name.
Me: Okay, Lorenzo.
Her: Lorenzo?
Me: Yes, Lorenzo..
Her: That’s not your name.
Me: How do you know?
Her: You don’t look like a Lorenzo.
Me: You asked for a name and I gave you one.
Her: You want me to write Lorenzo?
I just smiled and she reluctantly wrote Lorenzo on the cup. I came back the next day and, again, I was the only one on line and she asked “Name?” ‘ Really? “You don’t remember me from yesterday.”
She asked for a name again and this time I said, ’Kurt.’
Her: That’s not your name.
Me: How do you know that?
Her: Because you were Lorenzo yesterday.
Me: If you knew the name, why did you ask?
Her: Because you need to provide that every time. It’s store policy.
Me: You asked for A name and not MY name. Kurt is a name.
She wrote Kurt on the cup and we did this dance every day for a few months and she never really got the joke. Rather than walking a mile in another man’s shoes, I’ve had quite a few opportunities to quite literally drink out of his cup and be someone else, at least until I finished my tea. Just like Ferris Bueller pretending to be Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, to get a lunch reservation at a posh restaurant, I can be someone a bit more exciting than just everyday do you need someone to calculate your lunch tip ‘Craig.’
If I introduce myself as Craig, people are thinking, ‘well this guy could do my taxes’ or ‘he probably drives a Honda’ but when I’m Lorenzo, I can be a reclusive billionaire, or a bull fighter, or on the cover of a romance novel, or righting the wrongs of an unjust government with a sword and a cape. And Kurt brings some interesting lifestyles to mind.
I don’t know any Kurts personally but I am a huge fan of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter-House Five and his resemblance to Mark Twain didn’t exactly hurt his career. Kurt Cobain killed the hair bands with an old t-shirt, a stool, and an acoustic guitar. A Kurt was also Penny’s muscle-head boyfriend from The Big Bang Theory. If I introduce myself as Kurt, I sound more literate, more musical, and more muscular than just plain old ordinary Craig.
I have revisited when I know she’s working and I’ve used:
Abe (Lincoln and Froman)
Liberace (there could be two of us)
Rasputin (yeah, that guy)
Madonna (don’t judge)
Craig Cougar-Melloncamp
Engelbert (Humperdinck)
You could fault me for using Engelbert because it’s such an original name, but is it really? I did a little research (very little - thanks Wikipedia) and Engelbert wasn't his real name; he actually began his career as Gerry Dorsey but he made the name change as Gerry “wasn’t arresting enough” and the real Engelbert Humperdinck was a famous German composer; the German Engelbert seemed to have a more adventurous life than the pasty English Gerry, but Gerry wasn’t his real name either; he was born as Arnold George Dorsey and it seems he just kept changing his name until he sounded more famous.
I’m not going to change my name as I think Craig is a perfectly fine name but I do like the idea of ordering my morning coffee as Kerouac or reserving a table at a Chinese restaurant by simply saying, ‘Seinfeld, four.’ At a wedding recently, I made it a point to introduce myself to everyone I didn’t know and use a different name every time. To one guy I was Copernicus and an older couple knows me as Leonardo (not as in DaVinci or DiCaprio but as in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle) and to a hot twenty-something wearing a dress that would be small on Barbie, I was Fabio but, oddly, that didn’t help my chances of hooking up with her or anyone and neither did Casanova or Vlad the Impaler.
For now, my legal name with still be the ordinarily boring Craig as I so used to turning around when someone yells it and with the name change, you know I’d have to spend an entire week at the DMV trying to justify why my name is changing to Stephen King.
