By Any Other Name

My Dear Fellows & Dear Princess Normal,

I am The Irishman. That's me. 

I found this out a week or so ago. I had loaned Lemon my copy of Poi E and she was watching it at home when her partner asked what was making her laugh.

"The Irishman loaned it to me," she told him.
"Why would a Pakeha be interested in Poi E?" he asked. 
She told him I was educating myself.

Cazza laughed when I told her. "She does KNOW you're from Yorkshire, right?" she said. 

I explained that Lemon is terrible with accents. She thinks Manitoba is Irish too. And Manitoba is from Manitoba.

But Lemon told me that she has explained all this to her family, and even given them my actual name. However, she still typically refers to me as "The Irishman" around the house. "Oh you mean Simmen," says her partner. 

He is perplexed by the spelling of my name. "WHY would a mother do that to her child?" he wanted to know. "He just assumed it was all your mum's fault," said Lemon, "such a bloody sexist."

Although he's also a bloody correct sexist. My dad wanted to call me "Bruce". Although I'm not sure that would have been much better at school.

(Can you imagine? "Nice to see you, to see you nice!" whenever I walked into every classroom ever.)

Because "The Saint" was so popular in the 1960's my mum decided she loved the name Simon. But no, every other kid was called Simon so I would be "Symon". She foresaw NO PROBLEMS AT ALL with this.

Eff's effing sake. Seriously. I hate it. It's not just people mispronouncing it these days. Even Uber thinks my name is pronounced Simmen. "Drop Simmen off in twenty metres," she says to Uber drivers. 

"Thanks Simmen," the taxi driver will say, dropping me off. And I curse my mother all over again. 

"It could be worse," Lemon sympathised. "I know a woman who named her child Macsyne".

It took me a while to figure it out. Maxine, you have my sympathy.

Every now and again I think of killing Symon off. Changing the name on the CV and ending him. But the problem is that new employers always want to know about you from previous employers. 

"You're not what we're looking for in our new team Simon," I imagine them saying, "We really need the skillset of this here Simone lady."

I mean that's the biggest problem. Because it is spelled different, people often wonder what sex I am. I get "Simone" a lot which obviously plagued me all through effing school. Or if not that, then "Swymon".

And then there was the day my maths teacher Mr. Aitken asked, "Which one of you is Semen?"

Thanks. Thanks for that. Fifteen year old boys are very forgiving about that sort of thing, as we all know. I'm sure they will have forgotten about it in, oh, ten, maybe twenty years time.

Perhaps that is why I like nicknames. I love being El Parsones. I love being O'H Dear. I'm more than happy to be The Irishman. Heck, I'll even settle for Bruce.

But, just so you know, I draw the line at Semen.

S.

p.s. Typing this in, I remembered a story that Hilary told me. And because it is a Hilary story, you have to act it out to yourself enthusiastically just like she always does.

So Hilary was on the bus in Ireland when she overheard two ladies having a chat.

LADY 1: Oh! 'Tis yerself! I haven't seen ye in AGES!
LADY 2: Oh, well that's because I've been in the hospital, I just had a little baby!
LADY 1: Ooh! Ye had a LITTLE BABY! Oh, that's BRILLIANT! And what is it, a boy or a girl baby?
LADY 2: A little girl.
LADY 1: Ooooh! A wee little girl! Oh that's grand! And what is it ye're calling her?
LADY 2: Wivven.
LADY 1: Wivven! Now that's a LUVLY name. Just LUVLY. Very unusual though. Can't say I've heard it before.
LADY 2: I know. Well I saw it in a book and I just loved it. I thought it sounded so exotic.
LADY 1: "Wivven". Yes. I can see that. But how would you be spelling that now?
LADY 2: You spell it Y-V-O-N-N-E...

I've always wondered if that was a real story, or if Hilary was recycling an old Val Doonican joke. But because it's Hilary, I choose to believe it's true.