Reunion: Day 2

So this thing is turning out to be a success. Trust me, it's weird. I didn't expect that my facebook event would get such a big response from all our old friends in the community.

One of the most interesting trends to come out of this thing has been the re-introduction posts. It's like a nice mid-season flashback episode of your favorite TV show that you accidentally lost track of. (This is probably due to a scheduling conflict).

I realized how sad and uninteresting mine was by comparison, so I've thought about doing another more detailed one, but you know what, that time has past. It was yesterday.

I'm not sure if I've actually blogged for a whole week in a very, very long time. I'll probably post this and then realize I did like, last month. Forgive me if I did, for I know not what I do. Often.

So we're going to get right down to business. I think someone pointed out yesterday that I had actually never written about that unreasonably oft' asked request: Why do people call you smurfy.

First off, I have nightmares about that question. It's nice sometimes at parties because it gives me something to talk about with people who I don't know very well, and I can stretch that sucker out for half an hour if I really want to. I will not do this today. Instead, I will simply give the background necessary to understand why it happened and stuck like it did.

I was home-schooled for a long time. I missed some pretty important social and emotional development in there, in case you were wondering. 8th grade was a pretty crazy year (the year I went to public school). A lot of anger, and a lot of angst really all coming together at one of those crucial moments in your life where people are pressing you really hard to form some kind of identity for yourself.

For awhile, I was just who I am when I'm alone. Quiet and invisible. But I have another force driving me, and it's one of ego. Look at me, please. Please?

It is bigger than the side of me that is introverted, so after awhile, regardless of what I meant to do, I started drawing attention to myself, and when you do that you attract some people who feed off of destroying that same ego that draws them to you. These were most of the kids on my school bus.

They gave me the name "Smurfy" not as a gift but as a way to make fun of my dumb bowl-cut that I had going on much past the cool age of having one. (What, like, seven?)

The fact that I had been home-schooled for so long meant that 98% of the kids I went to school with didn't know my name. The cool kids on my bus yelling "Smurfy" to me across the hallways and to their influential, popular middle school friends insured that the awkward tension around the name "Morgan" left almost completely. In a way, it was good for me. I didn't have to get made fun of for having a "girls' name" anymore, and when you're an 80 pound, short awkward 12-year old, that's a big relief. One less thing.

It stuck, and I stuck with it for that reason.

When I came to college I briefly tried to avoid it, but it had become almost who I was. Some weird caricature of myself; louder and more indignantly stupid. I tell people what my real name is now, I'm not scared of it, but I don't tell people what to call me. Those people are twenty-somethings now, and if they think it's still okay to say "Smurfy" in public, they can do it. I don't mind, and that's the truth.

I have always thought of the name as something that I owned, though. Like I was different in high school because I was literally the only person with my name. Talking about "Smurfy" was talking about me, there was no confusion. I had it entirely, and this made me feel a little more confident in myself at a time when I was desperately searching for something to like myself for.

That's a little more sad than I intended it to be, but it's a much more honest version of that story, or at least one that makes more sense from a personal perspective. Not the one I tell at parties.

Not yet, anyway.