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Call Me Something

Anita G. Gorman

    When she was little they called her Bess. When she went to school, she asked her classmates to call her Betsy, after a character in her favorite children’s book. That lasted for a while. Then in junior high, some of her friends started to call her Lizzie. That made her feel liked, somehow, but then she heard about the expression Tin Lizzie from her father.
    “So now they’re calling you Lizzie at school No more Bess? No more Betsy? Reminds me of the Tin Lizzie.” He chuckled.
    “What’s that, Dad?”
    “A nickname for a really old car that came out over a hundred years ago, when the idea of an automobile was very new. The car’s real name was a Ford, a Model T Ford.”
    She frowned. “I don’t want to be named after a car.”
    “Just tell your friends that. Maybe they’ll come up with another nickname. When we named you Elizabeth, we had no idea that so many variations of the name existed. Something to ponder if we have more kids.”
    Soon Lizzie was gone, but it was replaced by Liz. She heard her friends and even her enemies (if she had any, and she wasn’t sure) call her Liz. Liz! Liz! Hey, Liz! On the playground, on the way to school and back, in her fourth grade classroom, there it was. She thought about her new nickname one day. It didn’t sound right. Why didn’t it sound right?
    She knew right away on the day that Mrs. Oliphant presented a unit on lizards, those ugly little creatures. Not that they could help it, of course, and to other lizards they were probably pretty, or at least acceptable.
    Soon the mean kids in her class—and suddenly fourth grade seemed overrun with them—started calling her Lizard, in the playground, in the school bus, and under their breath in the classroom. When she got home her mother presented her daughter with a glass of milk and a large chocolate chip cookie. Elizabeth looked up. She had tears in her eyes.
    “What’s wrong, Cupcake?” Mom seemed to come up with a different nickname for her daughter every day.
    “The kids started calling me Lizard today. Mrs. Oliphant taught us about lizards, and we saw pictures of them. Boy, they were ugly. So then the kids called me Lizard at recess and on the bus. They hate me.” The tears spilled over.
    Her mother sat down. “Listen, Candy Cane, they just think they’re being funny. That reminds me of a time when I was in elementary school. I think it was fifth grade. From the time I was little my parents shortened my real name, Penelope, to Penny. And then a silly girl in fifth grade thought it was so hilariously funny to call me Nickel, or Dime, or Quarter, or Half Dollar. We even had a boy in the class who was born in England. He started calling me Halfpenny and Tuppence and Shilling. I really hated it.”
    Elizabeth took a bite of her cookie. “So what did you do, Mom?”
    “I talked it over with Grandma and Grandpa. Together we decide that they were going to start calling me Penelope. They called my teacher and told her that I was upset with the goofy nicknames and asked her to call me Penelope. And then my parents bought me a children’s edition of Homer’s Odyssey.”
    “What’s that?”
    “It’s a very old book. It was written three thousand years ago in the country of Greece. It’s about a man named Odysseus who was fighting a war, and at the end of the war he starts traveling to his home of Ithaca. It takes him ten years to get back to his faithful wife, who loves Odysseus very much, even though other men want to marry her. And in the end, Odysseus comes back and he and Penelope are happy again.”
    “So what happened to you, Mom? Did the kids stop calling you those weird names?”
    “Yes, they did, but only after the teacher gave us a little talk. She said that nicknames were fine, but so were real names. She said that there were usually good reasons why our parents had given us a certain name. Sometimes we were named after a grandparent or an aunt or uncle, or maybe even a famous person.”
    “Who were you named after?”
    “Well, I had a great-grandmother named Penelope. That’s pretty much it. Later on, my mom found out about the Odyssey. She told me that I had an ancient and honorable name. Just like you.”
    “I do? You mean Elizabeth? It’s so long.”
    Her mother counted on her fingers. “Just one letter longer than Penelope. And Elizabeth is also an ancient and honorable name.”
    Her daughter looked skeptical.
    “Yes, there were many women named Elizabeth. Let’s see. Mary’s cousin Elizabeth in the Bible. She was the mother of John the Baptist. And the current queen of England is Elizabeth. And there was Saint Elizabeth of Hungary. She was a princess. And there have been movie stars with your name and other famous people. Maybe that’s something we could look up. We could make a list of famous women named Elizabeth, but only if they were nice people. There might be a few bad eggs in the pile.”
    “Do you think I should ask the kids and my teacher to call me Elizabeth?”
    “Sounds like a good idea to me, Sweetie.”
    “Mom, how come you never call me by my name?”
    “Never thought about it. I guess the names I use for you are a way to show you that I love you. But if you’re going to ask everyone at school to call you Elizabeth, then I’m going to do the same.”
    “Dad likes to call me Pumpkin.”
    “Well, if I’m going to stop calling you Cupcake or Sweetie or whatever, then he’ll have to give up using Pumpkin. What do you think? Is that a good idea?”
    “I guess so.” Then she started pronouncing her full name, getting the feel of it on her tongue. Elizabeth. It made her sound like a grown up. It made her sound important somehow. Elizabeth.
    And on the next morning she felt like the new girl in class, like someone no one would make fun of. The future for someone named Elizabeth was beginning to look quite bright.

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