Taking A Stand: I went from being cool to being a loser
It doesn’t take green hair, more piercing holes than a block of Swiss cheese and pants that hang down to your knees exposing your Super Friends underwear to the world to stand out in the crowd.
While some folks go to great lengths to get the world to “hey, look at me because I’m special,” sometimes all it takes is a goofy name tag to get everyone to look.
I found this out first-hand this weekend at the Exchange Club convention in Memphis. As many of you know, most of these conventions insist you wear a name tag so you can be easily recognized. They usually start with “Hi, my name is …”
This is all well and good when you’re mixing with a hundred other people also saddled with these brazen identifiers. So, it was with no regrets I fastened on the tag and mixed with my fellow Exchangites. It was actually a good thing in my case since I’m very bad at names. You know the feeling. Some person comes up and starts talking to you like they’ve known you for years, and you’re standing there thinking to yourself, “Who in the world is this?”
You nod and smile, treating them like an old friend, all the time grasping in the back reaches of your memory for their name. Try as you might, it’s not going to come to you and you dare not ask their name. All you can do is just stand there and smile, hoping someone you do know doesn’t come up and ask you to introduce them to this mystery person.
I guess this is the reason the name tags were invented, to spare people this awkward feeling given the fact that generally, if you don’t know a person, you introduce yourself even though your name tag is hanging right there for everyone to see.
The problem with the name tags though, is the way they weigh down your shirt. Seeing I’m not a suit-wearer generally, the clips tend to stretch out my shirt, taking away from the appearance of my rippling chest muscles. Of course, being an egotist, I can’t have that, so, unlike the rest of the group, I placed my tag on my belt. Not only was this more comfortable, but I was able to catch the eyes of those who had forgotten my name when they glanced down to read the name off my tag.
It wasn’t until much later that I figured out the downside of wearing my tag in the alternate location. Following the afternoon meeting, some of us went down to Beale Street for the evening. If you’ve never been there, Beale is literally packed with tens of thousands of people on the weekend.
At various stages during our walk down Beale, I kept thinking I heard people calling me by name. I immediately dismissed this theory as my imagination since hey, I was four hours away from home and it’s not likely people would know me there. At the same time my ego was encouraged by several girls who came by, looked me up and down and smiled, with one even calling me by name. This confused me. Did I know this girl?
So anyway, we begin walking back to the hotel and I asked my friend if he noticed “those girls checking me out.” I noted that one even called me by name.
At this point he grinned and gestured toward my belt line. With great dismay I looked down to see my “Hi, my name is Duane Sherrill” tag on my belt. In that moment I went from Mr. Popular on Beale to Mr. Goofy from Squaresville. The tag may as well have read “Hi, my name is Loser.” I should have put a “kick me” sign on my back and left my fly down to complete the goofy ensemble.
Hey kids, you want to stick out and be an individual, forget the baggy pants, just wear a name tag, that’ll make you stick out like a sore thumb.
(Duane Sherrill is a reporter for the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)