What's in a Name?

We now take a brief detour from the Wilderness Years to ponder the Wilderness Years, well not exactly, they say the past can be a grotesque animal or it can be a beautiful view or it can be a bitch slap, depends i guess really on where point A (past) collides with point B (present) and every so often out here in the lily white the old crashes into the new and i'm always left shaking my head because maybe if i've learned anything in the last 20 odd years (which is highly debatable) it is that i'm much more self aware now of my actions and ramifications thereof than i had been in my wayward youth, or maybe if i'm being brutally honest, once i was a narcissistic asshole and now i'm old, wasn't it Oscar Wilde who prattled on about the beauty of the young flower? i could be completely fucking wrong, somewhere there's an old photo i took of Oscar's grave the day i wandered around Pere Lachaise looking for Celine's grave (only to find out later that Celine was buried in Meudon), covered with flowers left by his adoring fans, but where was i?

In the very un-Wildean setting of a suburban hockey rink, watching Nick Disaster work on his skills, i had run into an old acquaintance who also had sons in the class, a guy i had known and hadn't seen in close to 20 years, we had recognized each other a few weeks back and since he was freshly divorced he was there every other week, in his younger days he had always been a bit of an uppity prick but the failure of his marriage had seemed to take the prickliness off him, he was a bit softer around the edges shall we say, not that we were going to be exchanging numbers and grabbing beers any time soon but we had mutual friends and so we sat back and watched the kids skate and listened to the sound of pucks cracking into sticks and i for one spent a good deal of time ogling the one instructor who reminds me of the girl in the Dragon Tattoo movie, (Rooney Mara i believe) though i've seen roughly 15 minutes of the movie and never read any of the books...

And so it happens the next time i see him he's with his new lady friend and we sit on the same bench and say hello and he introduces me to her, he uses my "Christian" name as they say in some parts and let's just say that my actual name is bit white trash, a nickname for an actual longer name or the kind of name that could be dignified on an adult but that a mother would worry about kid's making fun of  growing up, all shit that was taken into consideration by my doting and worrying mother... i'm also named after my old man whose roots are in the south and it's name more common below the Mason/Dixon line than above, also i'm not a junior... still with me? and so it's not a common name like Joe or Jim or Bob but it's not an exotic one by any stretch of the means, most likely you meet one or two over the course of your lifetime, so she says hello and shakes my hand and a moment or two passes and this look of surprise comes over her face and she says to him, Kono? like is this the Crazy Kono i've heard about? and he smiles a bit sheepishly and says yep that's him... she turns to me and smiles as if i'm a C-list movie star she's just met at the auto show, a cross between mildly impressed and somewhat fascinated as if i'm a side-show freak... i smile back and let out a cross between a sigh and a laugh and explain that these days i usually just go by Kono and try to avoid the whole "crazy" part, she then looks at me and asks why? she states very matter of factly that a nickname like Crazy is not handed out to just anyone and shouldn't be taken lightly, that i should be proud of my old moniker, embrace it, they just don't call anyone the King or the Boss and like that Crazy is a name hard earned and one to be respected... or perhaps more aptly it's given to fucking nut cases who drink way to much and take any narcotic put in front of them and then generally go out and cause trouble or do stupid fucking shit that should get them maimed or killed or incarcerated...

Of course i smiled at this and knew that part of what i thought  was a beautiful and brilliant explanation was because they both had thought they offended me and this being the lily white it was bad decorum to do so, i smiled back at her and told her that her rationale was a fine thing and after her having explained it i whole-heartedly agreed and the evening continued on pleasantly enough as we watched the kids skate and pass and shoot and we discussed the usual non-sense of music and books and old friends... i wasn't offended in the least...

Later that night as i sat in my flannel pajamas bottoms eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes, stoned outta me bejesus and petting my cat Louie while watching shit telly with the sound practically off i caught myself grinning maniacally as i thought about exactly what she had said, all the hard work that went in to earning that name, the aforementioned woman's new flame had known me some 20 odd years ago, there was another guy i knew who i hadn't met until about a decade later, he used to tell a story about how he came to know me, part of it was how he was in our favorite dive one night watching a local band and how suddenly this enormous ruckus came barrelling out of the corner, he said he turned to someone and said what the fuck is happening? and the person replied, oh it's just Crazy Kono raising hell it happens all the time, the other part was the night supporting the local futbol club where i did my best to piss off and antagonize the local law enforcement for what i believed was unjustified harassment, how was i supposed to know you weren't allowed to drink or smoke or take leaks in suburban high school parking lots when the local shite footie team called it their home ground, the low-life crew and i had been doing it for two years running and never had a problem, funny how a few years later i would move to that section of the burbs from my hipster city hood... but there was the evidence, two of many instances where my name would be prefaced with the word crazy, two guys who had never know each other and that i'd known some ten years apart and here they knew me by that name...

And don't fucking think for a second that i introduced myself that way, somehow it just followed me, there were bartenders and strippers and busboys and local drunks and pizza shop owners and of course customers and friends who had dubbed me such, many times they wouldn't say it in front of me back in the day but when it did come out they'd laugh and i'd laugh and they'd say you are fucking insane most of the time, the most of the time being my favorite part for apparently when caught in more contemplative moods i was quite a pleasant chap to be around... and when i was caught in Crazy mode i was fun but much the facilitator of bad habits and influence or in case this becomes a movie, fucking daring and roguish and handsome and brave... or maybe just lucky to not be dead or in jail... i didn't say no to much and i realize now i was hell on wheels almost every time i walked out that door and sometimes even worse if i didn't walk out that door... and so yes dammit i embrace the nickname, it was hard earned through actions and intake and blood and sweat and i realize now that for going on almost two decades a good many people in this town referred to me as crazy, i'd like to think more Randall Patrick McMurphy crazy but crazy nonetheless... at least it makes for a few good stories when polishing the mahogany...