Month: July 2023

On a particularly light-hearted moment, I entered a conversation about organ donation.  Are people generally for or against organ donation?  One response was, “Take everything, I don’t need it.”  This was an incredibly sensible and practical response; it wasn’t mine.  I confessed that the idea of walking around in the afterlife without a couple of key parts, like my eyes and my heart, gives me the creeps.  That’s right, I, who have not practiced Catholicism since boyhood, who aspires to epitomize logic and reason… gets the creeps about not having eyes or a heart in the afterlife.

The response to my confession was a surprisingly good out, “Once you make it to heaven, you’ll be whole again.”  That’s great; it means that in some ways, I don’t need to worry about how my body parts are parceled out.  I suppose that in the other case, lacking my eyes or heart would be the least of my worries.

Continue reading “Assholes in heaven” →

My older sister and I have an ongoing, but distressingly regular, discussion.  When we talk, she often refers to me as “Frankie”; this is not okay.  Our dialogue goes something like this:

Me:  My name is Frank.  Please stop calling me “Frankie”.
Her: I called you that when you were little.
Me:  I know, but I never said that was okay.
Her: I don’t mean anything bad by it.
Me: I understand, but it’s not my name.
Her: It’s a term of endearment.
Me: It’s not if it doesn’t endear me.

To be completely fair, Frank is neither my birth nor legal name; it’s simply the name I choose to go by.  I understand that she calls me that without malice and mostly because she forgets, but the fact remains.  I should be called what I asked to be called.

It reminds me of dialogue from Pretty Woman:

Vivian:  Can I call you Eddie?
Edward:  Not if you expect me to answer.

Continue reading “Montague or Capulet” →