I’d like to think I make an impression on people. I’ve long believed that time spent with me is not soon forgotten and that those whose lives I have entered – if even for a little while – often spend evenings sitting on a porch, reminiscing about all the wonderful things I used to do. For years I drifted along thinking that others held only warm thoughts for me. As it turns out, I was mistaken.
I’d like to think I make an impression on people. I’ve long believed that time spent with me is not soon forgotten and that those whose lives I have entered – if even for a little while – often spend evenings sitting on a porch, reminiscing about all the wonderful things I used to do. For years I drifted along thinking that others held only warm thoughts for me. As it turns out, I was mistaken.
I received an invitation to attend a reunion. For a time, I worked in a call centre. It was a job in the public service and, unlike previous jobs that needed only either a hairnet or boots with a steel toe, demanded the wearing of a tie. This was despite the fact that the telephone is and remains a predominantly non-visual medium. I was there for about five months before the whole show was transferred from the State to Commonwealth and I picked up a job in the private sector. Twenty-five years have passed since that tumultuous time. I could only begin to imagine what had happened to most of them but I was certain that they, like me, cherished the time we spent together. The invitation came with a list setting out all the people who had ever worked in the call centre. Out of idle curiosity, I searched for my own name but found no mention of ‘Stuart’. Instead, the list referred to me as ‘Erik McCullough’.
Being misremembered is much worse than being overlooked altogether. If your name doesn’t appear at all, you can always comfort yourself that the person preparing the list never had the divine pleasure of your company or that some catastrophic software malfunction has meant that part of the record has been destroyed. No such solace is available when you turn up as ‘Erik.’ It’s as if my former workmates kind of recall working with me, but not enough to remember my actual name. It does, however, go some way to explaining why so many of those in the call centre have failed to invite me to birthdays, weddings and bah mitzvahs over the past two decades.
When it comes to being misremembered, there are degrees. I could probably handle being confused with a similar sounding name or one that started with the same letter. Had the list cited ‘Steven’, ‘Scooter’ or even ‘Saddam’ McCullough in place of Stuart, I probably would have taken it on the chin. I would even have worn the nametag entirely without complaint. But ‘Erik’? Please.
They couldn’t even make me a conventional ‘Eric’, preferring instead some kind of Nordic mutation. If they’d thought of me as just plain, regular ‘Eric’ I would comforted myself by thinking of all the great Erics of History. There’s ‘Eric the Viking’ and, of course, ‘Wreckless Eric’, to say nothing of Eric Estrada. Better yet, ‘Eric’ is an anagram for ‘rice’, which can only be a good thing. But Nordic ‘Erik’ means nothing. That said, there was (of course) Erik Erikson, the famed psychoanalyst responsible for developing the concept of the ‘identity crisis’. For many, Erik Erikson is regarded as the uber-Erik, as no-one before or since has been more ‘Erik’ than he, much as Gary Garry Beers from INXS is jam-packed full of Gary goodness like no other. What were my long-lost friends trying to tell me? Was getting my name wrong a deliberate reference to Erik Erikson to subtly suggest that I suffer from a split personality? Neither of me thinks so.
Rather, I decided that these people with whom I once spent the hours between nine and five, five days a week for about five months nearly twenty years ago were making a none-too-subtle suggestion that I ought to change my name. Looking back over my performance, they may just have a point. It was my first office job and, at the time, I was exclusively dressed by the Myer Bargain Basement. Part of the job involved sending out information sheets to an expectant public; a task I filled with great enthusiasm. Each day, I would stand at the facsimile machine, dispatching the greatest gift of all – information – across the state. When people rang to say they were yet to receive the fax I’d promised, I would faithfully resend the missing pages. Only after three or four months did I realize that I was faxing everything the wrong way round, ensuring that nothing but blank pages ever arrived at the intended destination. My enthusiasm counted for naught.
Then there was the staff Christmas party that was held in the office and each staff member had to take turns in answering the phones. It is now common practice to record such calls for quality purposes. However, it is a matter of great personal relief that this was not the case at the time as I now seriously question the quality of my advice and if I did anything for the caller other than suggest we order pizza it would be nothing short of a Christmas miracle.
It was such a long time ago. As each year dissolves more rapidly than the last, it seems to be more and more the case. In the end, I piked and left the reunion to others. I could concoct a reason, but it’s best just to say that I decided to let sleeping Eriks lie. Sometimes the past is already right where it belongs.