The Small-Town Waitresses
We just got back from a delightful excursion to one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes. Our friends fished. We sat on the shore and listened to three days silently fading away, taking with them our stresses and concerns. Creation is a wondrous thing.
While we were there, in this God-tended place, we went to the local diner for a few meals. One cannot eat fish all the time. These visits gave my wife and I pause to consider a place where the waitresses were young, local women. Smart. Witty. Attractive.
One of these young women identified herself as “Linda.” I was struck by how unusual it is, particularly in my urban/suburban setting, to hear someone of her age with what I will call (perhaps ignorantly) a regular name. It seems that names like Linda, Mary, Jill, and Ann, for girls, and names like Mike, Jeff, Harry, and Bill, for boys, have gone away. They have been replaced by androgynous names like Taylor, Madison, and Andreas, or worse. One of my students, in fact, showed me proof that she once had an employee named Shi-thead, spelled without the hyphen, and pronounced sheh-THEED. Not exactly the kind of thing you want on your nametag.
Do we hate our children that much, as a culture, that we give them such names. They will always be a part of the “bad-name generation.” Chances are, we all know a Tiffany, and chances are, we all know the two-year period in the 80s in which she was born.
It may be cultural gender bias, but I think women suffer more from bad names than men do. Not that men have good names, it’s just that they suffer less for them. After all, boys never use proper names. Just ask my boyhood friends Whiffer, Biff, Roz, Dolf, and Shua. I know whereof I speak–those who know me well can attest to that, for my own name is better now, but difficult to grow up with.
Let us pause and give thanks, then, for a part of the world where girls can still grow up into charming, confident young women with straight-forward names like Linda. I hope she appreciates the gift that her parents gave her.
Note: If any of my friends read this, be assured, I’m not talking about you or the way you named your kids. This post is simply a humorous observation, just lacking in both humor and observation. I am not without sin in this naming matter. If more children had come into our lives, the girls would have been named Helen, Thelma, Alma, or Madeline, and the boys would have been named Nicholas, Devin, Alva, or Ethan. This is probably why we never had more kids.