HELLO my
name is:
Welcome to the party. Everyone wears two name tags but everyone has way more than two names. Some of us don't have any names yet, but actually have lots.
HELLO my name is: sex toy.
HELLO my name is: I'm not a noder
HELLO my name is: theonomist
Everyone says "I'm terrible with names," but everyone always remembers your name at parties--so who is it, besides you, that forgets names?
QUESTION 2. Do you have (a) more names than identities,
(b) more identities than names,
(c) the same of each, or
(d) None of the above?
I met 47 cool people this weekend.
I got to meet--maybe--20 of them. Each of them was a beautiful, unique snowflake, but each of them was actually... two or three... or four? Too much. We'll assume, for my sanity's sake, that you each had only 2 names. That's still more than forty names. What do I call the person whose face I can see in my mind, but whose noder name isn't his true name? How can I talk to czeano about my friend from college who looked exactly like him? When you ask Jurph a question that he can't answer, but you get a reply anyway, who answers? Do any of us have a true name, or will I someday laugh at myself for believing there was ever such a thing as Jurph?
A friend of mine introduced himself to my high school class as "Charles, don't call me Chuck." What did we call him? Chuck! And he was Chuck for the next four years, and in college, too, and he still signs things "Chuck". So which is it? HELLO my point is: no, not yet, hang on...
Goth joke overheard in Columbus:
Two Goths meet at a party, introduce themselves, and after a soulful pause, one says to the other, "No, what's your real name?"
The other bashfully admits another name, and the first smiles. He catches the gleam in her beautiful, over-mascara'd eyes, and says to her:
"No, what's your real name?"
So now, at last, my point: when the person that is me has changed far beyond what Jurph ever was, will you still call me Jurph? And even if I answer to it, will either of us ever be certain that it's me?