YOUR DAUGHTER IS A WHORE

Gentle Readers,

I don't really believe your daughter is a whore, although you'd better ask her where she's getting all that extra money all of a sudden, but Sandra over at Absolutely Narcissism says that if you use whore in the title of your post you'll get more readers. So did the title catch your eye?

Anyhoo, the reason we're here today is to continue discussing the importance of names, which I started yesterday and if you don't believe me then look at yesterday's post bitch.

My major point, today, Gentle Readers, is that you should make the effort to pronounce names correctly and if you don't know how to pronounce a name, then ask.

I've never been an Oprah fan, but I went through a brief spate of Oprah watching a while back because it's the last season of her TV show and I became curious because I'd never watched. I happened to watch the day that Oprah revealed she had a half-sister her mother had given up for adoption. I've always kind of idly wondered about Oprah's name and some Bible study bitches in Illinois told me she was supposed to be named for Orpah in the book of Ruth, but somebody couldn't spell. But I looked it up and read online that she really was named Orpah and her family changed her name because people couldn't pronounce it.

So you can pronounce Oprah but you can't pronounce the Biblically familiar Orpah? What?

When people say they CAN'T pronounce a name, I always have to wonder how hard they're really trying.

I used to go to church with a woman whose husband was Nigerian. Their last name was kind of long and hyphenated and she would never even tell people what it was. She'd say Oh I'm just S*****, forget about the last name. So I went out of my way to learn to pronounce and spell her last name. She was so pleased.

Remember, you are your name, and I grew up with a name that was extremely difficult to spell and pronounce and I absolutely went through hell because of it. You can't begin to imagine the way people mispronounced my name and how I dreaded having substitute teachers because I knew they'd get my name wrong. My seventh grade chorus teacher learned my name right away and actually said, It's too bad we can't all have weird names that are easy to remember.

I still get pissed when people transpose two letters in my last name and turn it into something completely different than what it is. Oh, and what's his name's name, oh my goodness, people were always acting as if it had letters in it that were not there at all and sometimes it would come out sounding way too much like horny. That got old real fast.

When I worked in the nursing home, we had a patient whose name started with C-O. The nurses and assistants were always pronouncing it as if it were spelled C-R-O. I kindly informed a group that the name did not have an R, and somebody said Oh whatever. I said No, not whatever, and then I pronounced her name correctly.

Can't we at least provide people with dignity by pronouncing their names correctly? It's really not that difficult to say, Excuse me, I'm not sure how to pronounce your name. Would you please help me out?

WORDS ARE POWER. Like when I tell you your daughter is a whore and you didn't already know.

Infinities of love,

Lola