A Reliable Plodder

April 5 2020

Names slip from use.

But then, they skip a generation or two

and come back,

traditional names

that carry a certain gravitas,

or sound young and fashionable

as if somehow refreshed by neglect.

Yet how well can a little girl

toddling around in pigtails

and pink princess pyjamas

wear a matriarch

like Sarah, or Eve?

And where have all the Sheldons gone

the Garys and Genes?

There is a theory

that we live up to our names.

The halo effect

of a handle that sounds heroic,

the anchor and chain

of something uncool.

I am a Brian,

which clearly means I'm white and straight

and could be of any age.

It's a reliable plodder

that nicely holds its own.

But what if I'd been christened

a Maddox or Axel

Rocco or Blade?

Or had made one up

and declared it mine,

reinventing myself

starting from the outside in?

Nicknames, sobriquets, and pseudonyms,

diminutives and monickers.

Terms of endearment

and noms de plume.

Or incognito anonymous

of which no one's ever heard.

Obscure names, and popular.

The one assigned at birth.

I came across the word “invalid” in a reference to a book from the early 19^th century. What struck is me how judgmental it sounds, how anchored in its time. As if someone who is injured, disabled, or confined to bed is somehow also invalid: illegitimate, fraudulent, null and void. Perhaps even ostracized, as a source of contagion: as if disability can be passed on! In the same vein, we have gone from “crippled” to “handicapped”, then to “disabled”, and now I believe the correct term is “challenged”. These may be euphemisms, and the valence of meaning may not be no so much inherent in the actual word as acquired by usage, but I don't disapprove of this evolution. I quite like “challenged”. I think it sounds more heroic than lacking, and it conveys both the difficulty and triumph of overcoming. Similarly, “old age” became “senior”. And now senior is tainted (at least by me it is!), although a politically correct replacement has as yet to come into widely accepted use.

I'm writing all this to explain where the poem began. Because I was going to riff on invalid/invalid, and began with this idea of words going out of fashion. Which names also do, although this was initially just a quick aside. But since the subject of names offered a lot more scope, I ended up completely abandoning the instigating idea. I still got to do my riff. Just not in the poem!