Giving a name
Since I last posted, I've had some pretty weird stuff happen. One I suppose is mostly positive--I at last know WHY I've been so run down for the past seven months. I've been diagnosed with anemia. Really severe anemia. Severe enough that I had cravings to suck on rocks and got winded just going up stairs. So my doctor has put me on a crazy-high dose of iron that's like swallowing barbells (okay, maybe not quite, but it is 50 times more milligrams than my trusty One-a-Day contained).
I have to say, it's a huge relief to give my general bleh feeling a name. And even though I still get winded and cold too easily, I have hope again. Because naming the illness put parameters around it. It stopped being some amorphous malaise that could eat my life. It's just a mineral deficiency.
Taking a name
The bad weird thing was having my wallet stolen out of my office. I work on a college campus on a floor with both classrooms and offices, so it's not hard for a pickpocket to slip through the crowds unnoticed, pop into an unlocked room, grab and go. (Believe me, I now lock up even when I use the drinking fountain.)
In hours between when the thief took my wallet and I noticed it was gone, he or she had run off to do a little shopping spree in my name. With my accounts, my credit. One bank flagged the fraud attempts immediately, the other let one charge go through, which I now must dispute.
Among the many calls I had to make to stop the fraud was a call to the credit agency Equifax. They now have flagged my name, so that would-be thieves can't use my name to apply for credit and ride my good reputation as someone who pays bills on time.
The $10 they took from my wallet could never hurt so much as their potential power to destroy my name. (I think there might be a good shapeshifter plot in this story somewhere, for one of you paranormal fantasy writers.)
Both for good and for ill, names are powerful. Names contain and define.
It's something to keep in mind when we write. Nothing is quite so chilling as a widespread plague that no one can name; a good name lost is far harder to restore than a lost fortune.
How have you seen the giving, withholding or taking of a name used powerfully?
