NAMING AND DESTINY

(NOMEN EST OMEN)

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In these days of rampant individualism, everyone can now claim to be an aggrieved minority of one. But those of us who still see ourselves as a single link in the Great Chain of Being—we are shackled from birth to the first letter of our last name.

It is no small thing. It is not just a letter. It is your placement in the line, in the ledger, in the liturgy of fate.

The following is our story—an example of growing up in the alphabetical ghetto.

Another name for a ghetto is an ethnic neighborhood. Those who’ve come through one often look back with fondness, even if at the time it felt like a penance. If it had its own scent in the breeze, it was our aroma. These olfactory signposts mark the soul.

To me, the scent of home will always be roasted red peppers. To others, it’s curry-laced fried food—which I once swore, if it ever reached our house six blocks from the South Asian colony (where every other storefront was a restaurant), we would move.

One day, in the backyard, I caught the scent. I ran inside and told everyone to start packing. Turns out it was coming from our own kitchen. Everyone laughed. But after that, the breeze was never quite the same.

Ghettos only smell bad if you’re not the one doing the cooking.

But naming? Naming is something else. A long-overlooked form of ghettoization comes at birth, in the form of your last name.

My own encounter with the alphabetical ghetto came in 7th grade. There were 14 classes of about 30 students each at Woodrow Wilson Junior High. The classes were ranked by reading comprehension. It made sense. 7-1 and 7-2 were the top. They had a different curriculum entirely—Greek myths, algebra, the works.

I was meant for 7-2. But I didn’t get in. The class had already filled up—at a kid whose last name began with “R.”

And me? Let’s just say I was somewhere after that.

So I ended up in class 7-3, with the middlebrow and the overlooked. They handed us a different version of history—and we knew it. We could smell it.

I resented it, but the school library was well-stocked. They had a full reference section. Encyclopedias. A whole shelf on the history of philosophy. At home, our encyclopedia stopped at “L” because the supermarket promotion ended there. But the library sets were complete.

The autodidact route is always open, but you have to want it.

Our school’s football team was called the Bombers—named after the munitions plants that ringed the town. The industry brought in tax revenue, and at least some of it went to books.

Let’s talk ambition.

My earliest dreams were to be an archaeologist, an architect, an astronaut, and maybe even an artist.

Why did they all start with A? Simple: I was still hopeful. I thought I could beat the alphabet.

But my letter had already spoken. I didn’t make the alphabetical cut-off.

So I learned how to fix air conditioners.

NOMEN EST OMEN!

—THE EDITOR

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Nota Bene: Jean Shepherd and Molly Tuttle were both fated to live in the alphabetical ghetto. Not bad company.

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Jean Shepherd:

“It all started in first grade at the Warren G. Harding school, where I was one among a rabble of sweaty, wrestling, peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich eaters.

But it was not until the end of the third month of school that I became dimly aware of a curse that would follow me throughout my life.

Along with Martin Perlmutter, Schwartz, Chester Woczniewski, Hellen Weathers, and poor old Zynzmeister, I was a member of the Alphabetical Ghetto, forever doomed by the fateful first letter of our last names to squat restlessly, hopelessly, at the very end of every line known to man, fearfully aware that whatever the authorities were passing out, they would run out of goodies by the time they got to us.

Medical science has finally begun to realize that those of us at the end of the alphabet live shorter lives, sweat more, and are far jumpier than those in the B’s and E’s and even the M’s and L’s.

People at the tail end of the alphabet grew up accepting the fact that everybody else comes first. The Warren G. Harding school had an almost mystic belief in the alphabet; if you were a P, you sat behind every O, regardless of myopia.”

—Jean Shepherd, A Fistful of Fig Newtons