A Beach Bum's View by Gary Becker Treasure Island Florida

Gulf Beach News

Your Name

Your name, it’s not something that you choose or even requested. Your name was assigned to you because some one else thought it sounded good or honored some one in the family. Your name is what makes you a little different from everyone else. Your name is also directly connected to your central nervous system and under certain circumstances, when you hear your name, fear rockets through your body.

Remember when you were sitting in class and being tortured by a particularly boring lecture. Your mind had whisked you away to a far better place and time putting a slight smile on your face as you escaped the mind numbing lecture. Then suddenly you heard Your Name. You were shocked back to reality as you felt a burning sensation from the teachers stare.

“Well?” questions the teacher.

That burning sensation now filled your chest as you realized the teacher and the rest of the class were waiting for an answer. An answer to what? Just seconds ago you were happily a thousand miles away until you heard Your Name. Now you are the center of the small universe called your classroom and you have milliseconds to either perform a miracle or crash in flames. You decide to fight back and answer,

“I didn’t understand the question, can you repeat it?”

A smile creeps across your lips and the tightness in your chest relaxes as you confidently believe you have pulled off one of the greatest saves in 6 th grade history

.“Your name”, the teacher returns, “exactly what part of the question did you not understand.”

You suddenly understand what it must have felt like to be standing on the bow of the Titanic as she nosed into the depths of the North Atlantic. The great save you had been celebrating only seconds before had now effectively painted you into the proverbial corner. You can now continue to hopelessly verbally spare with the teacher, admit you were not listening, or say nothing and hang your head in defeat.

“Your name” the now victorious teacher beams as you stare down at the floor, “you need to pay attention. Now that Your Name has wasted all of our time, can someone else answer the question?”

Salt is now rubbed in your wound as virtually everyone else in the classroom raises their hand. You hear the answer and you can’t believe that you’ve been put through the ringer over something as simple to answer as the question that you didn’t hear because you weren’t paying attention. And why weren’t you paying attention. Because the teacher was so boring and all you could think about was not being in the classroom. You wanted to be a thousand miles away having fun and enjoying life. You didn’t want to be in this boring old classroom hearing about boring old stuff that didn’t mean anything to you anyway. You don’t need any of this because you’re going to be rich and famous. You’ll show that mean old teacher. How much time was left before the bell rings any way.

Then you hear.

“Your Name, can you answer that?