Full-Circle

There are times in life when you feel like things are coming full-circle, like when I went to camp and met "Josh," just before going to the University. He said that his brother was going to go to the same university for grad. school. I thought: Ok, I might meet "Sam" sometime, and I saw a guy who looked vaguely like Josh at church, but didn't really check anything out. Then, 6 yrs. later, I was at an end of the year party with my grad. school comrades. My colleague's wife, saw me standing chatting with my grad. school friend, and she said, "Let me introduce you to someone: That is Sam, his dad is a pastor..." I said his last name, and she made the introduction. So, it took six years, but it came to pass that I did, in fact, meet Josh's brother, even though it was at the very end of my University years.

There are a couple of "famous last words" that I remember from when I was a kid. The first one went something like this: I was in the car with my mom, and I said, "Mom, you know there are some people who don't eat meat?" She said, "Yeah, I know." I'm like, "I don't think I could ever do that." She goes, "Me neither." Probably 5 yrs. later, I went vegetarian.
Lately, I've been thinking that I never expected that I would 1) have a boyfriend, 2) be living in the Southwest and 3) be going to teach for a year in China. I don't really know what I expected, but not any of that stuff. In fact, many of the things I said I would do, haven't happened, and many of the things I said I would never do, have happened.

This brings me to a third point, which is that I have never liked my name. I sounds like someone throwing up. And I get a little offended when Dbf calls me by my name, since it sounds so serious when he does it. I remember another time with my mom: I said, "Mom, what's my name?" She's like, "It's Beth." I say, "Really? But I don't like it." "Well, maybe someday you will like it." "I don't think so...When I go to college, can I have people call me Joanne?" "When you go to college, you can go by whatever name you want." But there's a stigma attached to people who don't like their names. One of my grad. school colleagues had that problem. She wanted to go by her middle name, but she had to jump through hoops to get the University to give her an email address with her first initial instead of her first name, and getting her name to show up correctly on directories, etc., was just a hastle. (And I remember thinking, why is she making such a big deal about it, it kind of seems like nit picking, esp. when I met her family, and they all called her by her first name.) I'm now getting another situation in which I could change my name, but again it seems like too much of a hastle. When I go to China, I can use my Chinese name, which has a nice meaning, but for some reason it reminds me of diapers "Bei Fu." I actually, don't think I would be happy with any name. So I accept my name as a label, and it's not so bad because I'm probably the only one who thinks it sounds like someone puking.

-MsLin