Gathering Speed

I consider myself to be able to remain in at least the majority of control over myself at all times. Sort of like a Cirque du Soleil gymnast, who needs to balance himself horizontally in midair using only one arm while juggling flaming children with his feet. Exactly like that, only with my face. If something is funny, I can remain calm. Such is often the requirement of being onstage; there is nothing more obnoxious than someone laughing at their own jokes and few things worse than professionals cracking up. The Jimmy Fallon Syndrome (JFS) immediately vaults you from the land of professionalism to the dusty sub-basement of mediocrity. So I pride myself in being able to remain composed.

Sadly, there are anomylies from time to time. Cal Ripken’s streak had to end, Ken Jennings had to lose, and Samuel L. Jackson had to make “The Man” with Eugene Levy. Luckily, my waterloo came offstage, in the comfort of a workplace environment.

I’m also fairly tolerant of other cultures, especially when it comes to naming conventions. If someone wants to name their firstborn “SockDrawer”, I say more power to them. It is always a nice twist on the day to go to a restaurant and hear, “Hello, my name is Saladfork, and I’ll be your server.” I do try to ignore the corollary between these ‘unique’ names and their professions, but it is important to know that I’ve never met a CFO or stock broker named after any cleaning products, yet have definitely encountered a Giordano’s waitress with a nametag reading, “Lysolle”. You can’t judge. I do know that sometimes things are lost in translation; a lot can happen on the bumpy road to English. It is my exact tolerance of this that led to my downfall.

Sitting in a meeting, enjoying the witty banter that is usually associated with xml coding restrictions, one of the IT directors decided to list the new projects that the engineers were working on for us. It is important to note that none of the engineers were born in the United States). “So Deepak is working on something for the new LMS platform…and Shithead will be correcting the interface tools.”

Shithead.

Release the hounds.

My first reaction was complete and total surprise. You don’t often hear the word ’shithead’ in a professional environment. It’s one of those terms that is often frowned upon by the Upper-Ups. The second reaction I had was that perhaps this IT person has reached a level of comfort with us that she can a) make a joke about someone we work with and; b) expose her distain for someone we work with. It was on the level of saying, “The Lazy-eyed, cock-smoking ass-clown will be handling the xml certifications from now on and the 320-pound diesel dyke will handle versioning, you know, when she’s not buried in mammalian abalone.” Wow, it just got comfortable in this room.

Then…the third reaction hit…the most fatal. I came to the conclusion that there was someone in the office named Shithead, or named something pronounced similarly to Shithead. Like “Chi-thayed” or just “Siteed”. The tangential mind took over and I was doomed. I instantly thought of what it would be like growing up with the name Shithead. Christ, they called me Rotch at camp one year (as in Mike Rotch…My Crotch…wordsmiths). Forget the years of ridicule that poor Shithead would be subjected to by his peers. What about being a neighbor and going across the street for a cookout, and witnessing the matriarch of the household going, “Shithead! Put down that whiffle ball bat and wash up for dinner! I’m not going to ask you twice, Shithead!” You’d call Child Services. Or what if they used the traditional Dr. Spock tactic of ‘using the child’s full name when you’re pissed’, like “Michael Evan Rosolio, don’t touch anything in the museum” or “Shithead Smegma Jones, stop poking your sister!”

So, naturally, I started cracking up in the meeting. It was like I was front row at a Bill Hicks concert and a funeral at the same time, trying so hard not to laugh that muscles in my face I didn’t even know I had began to hurt like I just powercleaned a Mini Cooper. The only thing that saved me was that one of the IT directors had made a joke, and they were all having a little chuckle about code or something. So I released, confident that my thunderous laughter at the tragic expense of poor Shithead would be disguised with the rest of the chuckling going on in the room. The trouble was that the director’s joke wasn’t as funny as mine, so when the madness in the room died down, my own personal carnage continued to flow out. It’s was like trying to stop a river with a tongue depresser; I would have had to have been Moses to stop this one. The smiles on everyone’s faces soon turned to confusion, because their joke wasn’t funny enough for me to laugh that hard. I was saved, however, as the meeting ended only four agonizing minutes later. I confided in a colleague the source of my meltdown and he assured me that I had misheard the director say Shijev.”

The moral of the story is that there needs to be a director of common sense at Ellis Island. We need to protect the tired and sick of other nations who risk so much for a better life in this country from having a name that sounds exactly like an obscenity. I’m not saying we need to Anglicize everyone’s names, but if someone is standing at the registration desk with a name like Poopcastle or Asshat or Cloudydischarge, they need to give them a creative pronounciation to save them from inadvertant ridicule in their new homeland. I would expect the corresponding offices in other nations around the world to do the same for me.

After all, for all I know ‘Mike’ means ‘douchebag’ in Hindi.