What's in a name

I babysat for Katie this weekend and while sitting around with my sister and brother-in-law, Wonderturtle came up in conversation. Last May, following our wedding, WT shared a cab to the airport with my sister and brother-in-law and taught them The Law and Order Game. From that day forward, my brother-in-law declared her one of the coolest people he'd ever met. But, when she came up by name on Saturday, he had no idea who she was. No idea, that is, until my sister said "You, know, Law and Order."

It got me thinking about how the simplest little things can quickly become our identities to people who barely know us. I thought about college. Big Head Girl, who worked on a play with some friends and made a nuisance of herself and had a big head. Willem Dafoe Keychain Girl, who made the mistake of telling a story in class about talking to her Willem Dafoe keychain. The Guy Who Looks Like Danny Siegel, who...well...looked like our friend Danny Seigel. Annoying Question Guy, whose name I learned after several other classes with him but who never stopped asking annoying questions designed to show the professor how much he knew. There were countless others.

The same thing happens now whenever I find myself at a scientific conference with someone I know. We end up referring to other people at the conference by single events or minor physical attributes that become their identity.

Other than the names that are vaguely cruel physical descriptions, most of them were based on a single event, a single comment in class that might have had very little to do with the person's actual character. Yet, its the tiny, seemingly pointless moments in our lives that often come to define us.