About

When I was just a young lad, I didn’t have a name.

No really, I swear.

I was eight days old before my parents gave me a name, and that was only because they had to before they could leave the hospital with me.

Those first eight days were magical. Not a single telemarketer could reach me, but on day nine the calls began and haven’t stopped since. At least it feels that way sometimes. Every time I sit down to eat the phone rings. The kicker is that anymore no one is on the other end. Just silence. Perhaps they are looking for the me from the past, the me without a name so they don’t know who to ask for. I’ve stopped answering the phone for the most part, unless my caller ID tells me it’s safe to pick up the phone and not be confronted by my nameless past.

My parents finally settled on the name Adam, though I’m not sure why. I’m not sure if they were trying to torture me or they just didn’t know what they were doing to me. I would have rather been nameless. Names make us distinct individuals, but being nameless, that would make me even more distinct. There are so few truly nameless in the world that for eight days I was truly one of a kind.

Kids never made fun of my name, that’s not what I’m implying. I just never cared for it. It never seemed to suit me. The real question that plagues me is would I have turned out any different had they chosen the name that eventually ended up taking the runner up spot, Jacob? Would my personality be any different? Would I have been less of a social misfit? Would I have had a lot of friends instead of a lot of acquaintances? Would I be me if my name were something else, anything else, or nothing at all even? How much influence does one’s name have on who they become in life? It’s a conundrum for sure. One I ponder over quite often.

You probably never had to wonder such things. You had a name from day one. You were never straddled with the burden of being literally just a nameless face in a sea of other little “bundles of joy” who’d already been straddled with the destiny of who they would become.

Me, I was just a number.

Today, I am a thinker more than a speaker, a ponderer as much as a doer, and a fibber more than a speaker of truths.

My mind is my prison, and a glorious prison it is. But, a prison is a prison regardless of the décor. The lower depths of the prison have become unsafe for travel over the years. They’re full of strange creature and men driven mad by who knows what. Each year the few lights that remain down there dim and fade, leaving a world of shadows for the demon hordes that thrive in the darkness. No lights at all remain on the deepest of the deep dungeonesque levels. Traveling by torch is dangerous and avoided unless absolutely necessary. Those bottom few levels frighten me to my very core. I am afraid of the things that live there, as I should be, as we all should be. I am afraid of what I may become if I stay down there for too long. Chances are I would end up no better off than those raving lunatics I’ve condemned to the darkest corners of my mind. It’s best to get in, grab what I need, and get out. No stopping to smell the roses down there. I doubt there are any roses down there anyway.

Note: I am a fibber in the sense that I tell stories of things that may or may not exist, not in the sense of being an outright liar.