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ESSAY
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| Confessions of A Man Impersonating John | |
| Hauquan Chau | |
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ESSAY
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| Confessions of A Man Impersonating John | |
| Hauquan Chau | |
Q: How do Chinese parents name their children?
A: They throw pots and pans from the top of the stairs and listen to the sound as they fall. Ching! Chong!
At times, I wish my pregnant mother did indeed make that trip up the stairs, tossed a pair of T-Fal frying pans and named me Ching or Chong. At least phonetically, most people would have less trouble in saying those names. I don't know what sort of objects my mother chucked down those steps that fateful day but it probably was not anything commonplace or normal as pots or pans.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that I hate my name. It’s more of a lifelong nuisance really, a badge of my ethnic past, a Chinese growing up in Vietnam until I was six when we moved to Canada. In high school, I always envied the students who hailed from Hong Kong with distinctly English names like Cecilia, Patrick, or Timothy. In my naïveté, there was a certain disparity I couldn't comprehend, a paradigm where I thought Asian faces should have incomprehensible spelling, unutterable tones, with English letters that should never be put next to each other in the Western world. Who puts an ‘x’ in their name? How about a ‘qu’ combination in the middle somewhere? Also, how about adding an ‘yn’ as in Huynh in my mother’s maiden name? If you checked yes to any of the above, then there’s a strong indication that ‘you’re not from around here are you stranger?’, as the sheriff would say to Clint Eastwood in one of his westerns.
And like the Cowboy Eastwood in a new town, you know there was going to be trouble. Of course it could, in the end, make you stronger; or finally make you scuttle away in the darkest recesses of society looking for the bright coveted world of Adam, Bob and Chris, green with envy of their phonetic simplicity.
I remember each of my elementary school teachers now with mostly fond memories. But the start of each new class always brought anxiety as the teacher would go through the class list, full of enthusiasm and pep every new academic year, with a great big smile for the empty-headed children.
"Carol, Ian, Stewart, Anthony, Tanya...," she would read, and then she—that is Mrs. Watts, Mrs. Sears, Mrs. Patterson, Mrs. Phillips— would stop, scrunch their eyes as if they just turned near-sighted, bring the piece of paper closer to their faces to make sure they’re seeing it correctly and perhaps think how God allowed such a combination of letters to appear on a nice pristine sheet of paper, logically listed alphabetically by last names. And then after taking a deep breath, she (most of my elementary school teachers being female, except for Mr. Brown in Grade six. What a lucky man, named after a colour!). And then she would say it, my name, or rather destroy it to the very last diphthong, trying to get her tongue around the letter combinations from Hell.
"Did I say it right?" She would ask.
I would give a slight shake of my head, trying not to stand out and I would whisper it as loud as I could. Then she would say it again, making the first syllable of my name sound more like a bird of prey. “Yeah, that’s fine,” I would reply but of course it wasn't. All this time, the other students are eyeing me like I just landed on the playground in a spaceship. The exchange was only a few seconds but I thought it was as if time had just stopped. If that wasn't enough to boost my insecurity about my own identity, she further adds: "How do you want to be called? Do you have a nickname?" Just call me by my name, please. No, no nicknames. (It was only later that I adopted the nickname of Hulkster among my friends, after the famous blond wrestler, not the green monster. I was often the smallest kid in class so irony was indeed thriving despite our so-called innocence.)
For most of the students, my name was just too alien to understand. It just didn't fit into their mental constructs of the world. They knew I had a physical form (albeit limited in size) and that I spoke their language. “How do I fit him into my mental construct?” they would ask themselves. Of course, it would take the Canadian kids to find someone who had a similar-sounding name in the world of hockey. A Swede called Hakan Loob, one of the great Calgary Flames players. Of course, it’s Hakan. I remember cherishing his hockey card for most of my third grade, looking into his boyish eyes and curly short hair, trying to find a glimpse of me in him. Finally, I was a real person with a real name.
Years later, I learned to jerk my arms up high in the air, before the teacher had the chance to mispronounce my name. The signs were always there, those scrunched-up eyes, that awkward pause and because my name was often at the top of the list, I just wanted to quickly get the whole ordeal over with.
Unlike pimples and baby fat that often get left behind in childhood, the anxieties of my name followed me into adulthood, always lingering in the back of mind until the moment I would have to utter it to a person who would ask for it. And then it was inevitable that he or she would not catch it the first time, apologize for it, and then I would have to say it again, slowly draw it out like one would pull out teeth. One time at a Wal-Mart, the check-out lady eyed the name on my credit card and asked me how to say it. She's got the same smile as the happy face she's got on her name tag. "Brenda," it said. Oh God, you lucky woman with that beautiful name, why make me drag my monster of a name out and destroy the precious relationship we have as seller and buyer? Just scan my $9.99 t-shirt and let me go. She was waiting and there were other customers impatiently standing behind me. So I told her. What a great name, she replied. And then she tried it herself, like test driving a car that she's about to purchase. The first corner and my name goes spinning out of control, self-imploding into the air between us. Like the sound of steel scrapping the surface of the road. I smiled back the way Brenda smiled, like the smiley face attached to her uniform and told her that she sounded just like my mother. She paused and then suddenly threw her head back and gave one big belch of a laugh. When she recovered and proceeded to ask me what my name meant, I grabbed my t-shirt and ran like the wind. A person can only stand so much.
Strangely enough, it was only after my trip to Mexico that I tried to adopt the English name of 'John'. Like English speakers, Spanish speakers had the same problems with hearing and pronouncing my name. "Juan?" they would ask. As it is my fate in life to say my name twice to everyone I meet, I would repeat and again they would completely ignore the first bit and then try to reconfigure the last syllable into something familiar. "Juan?" Just like being transformed into a Swede, named Hakan, I was now Juan, which actually sounded a lot sexier once the choppy 'K' sound of the 'Qu' was dropped. It didn't take much of a jump of the imagination to adopt John when I was back in Canada. So to everyone I met for the first time, I was just simply John.
In fact, it wasn't so simple after all. My colleagues and friends suddenly thought I was deaf when I never responded to their calls for my attention.
"John? Hello John? Earth calling to John."
On the outside to everyone around me, I was John but it took some time to internalize that it was me that they were talking to. In the end, John never stuck. I didn't feel like a John at all and faking it just made it worst. Did they really know that I am not John? That underneath that average-Joe exterior lurked a beast that had brought many a tongue to bay. Imagine the embarrassment of trying to explain to everyone in fact you are not who everyone thinks you are. I think I began with: “It all started in Guadalajara Mexico when…” and ended with: “…and so really nothing has changed, has it?”
Those around me would probably have gotten my attention much more quickly if they had called out "Hulkster", a name that somehow I felt was part of me indeed. I remember one time how glued I was to the television when the biography of Hulk Hogan was aired. A man who indeed was my adopted persona (minus the bulk, minus the talent, minus the blond frond, double the attitude, I would often share to the bemusement of my listeners.)
My name was always the extra baggage I wanted to leave behind on the conveyor belt but wherever I traveled, it followed me, ready to cause more havoc in my life. In Australia, there's a chain of coffee shops that actually requires you to tell the server your name. He or she then types it in on the computer for the singular purpose of embarrassing people like me with an 'exotic' name. If that wasn't enough, they would actually make an announcement to the whole cafe that my drink was ready for consumption. From the clerk, the 'aaas..." and the 'ums..' of buying time to decipher my name and the clearing of the throat was often the cues for me to pounce out of my seat to retrieve my drink before the clerk had the chance of splattering my name across the innocent ears of the other coffee drinkers. From then on, I just assumed a different alias every time I bought a coffee, just going through the alphabet: Adam, Brian, Chris, Dan... I don't remember if I ever got to Zack. I think halfway, I started to get bored and became calling myself biblical names (Jedidiah, Lazarus, Malachi) which for some reason didn’t get as much reaction as my true name. It sounds easy enough but trying to look someone in the eye and saying someone else's name with a steady voice and taking it as yours, without stuttering or giggling under your breath takes much conscientious effort, like trying to fool a lie detector test and the prize is a hot steaming cup of coffee without the extra public humiliation on the side.
In my bitter times, it was so much easier to feel sorry for myself, attached to name like a chain around my neck, hating the world and believing it was filled with mostly ignorance and stupidity. All because of a name, a word that identifies you to the whole world and in a way shapes the person you become, for better or worse. Do the Adams and Chrises of this world suffer from identity problems as well but in the reverse? With thousands of people sharing that same name, is there a drive to become different, to find something unique within themselves, to stand out among their similarly-named peers? Is it as embarrassing as wearing exactly the same Hawaiian floral shirt as the stranger walking by you on the street when you meet someone that has the same name as yours? Kris with a 'K'? Jon, without the 'h'? Jane with a ‘y’ as in Jayne? Are these playful attempts to change the spelling of these names a cry for attention?
When my own children were born, I decided to stow away the pots and pans and decided with my Japanese spouse to opt for 'Yuto' and 'Masa', short and neat without the confusing spelling bits. Their names are common here in Japan, not as common as John in the Occident, but common enough so that you can probably find a 'Yuto' or a 'Masa' on a class list or two. I don't know if their names will ever serve them well but the conscientious attempt to find names that was suitable for the English-speaking world was always the main motivation. I guess you could say I relinquished to societal pressures, trying to conform to what is acceptable by giving my sons names stripped down to its minimum. You could call me a conformist, even a chicken, but please, please, don't call me John.
