Regarding Mister
Before I was born, my parents decided to name me Dwight if I turned out to be a boy. Then, just a week before I was born, my father decided that Michael would be a much better name. My mother didn’t agree.
When I was born, they quickly realized I was a boy, and this is what happened:
Some time after my long expected arrival, the folks at the hospital gave my mother a form to complete. The form made it official: I was a boy (so far, one without a name). It said I weighed so many pounds and ounces. It said I was born on this date, at this time, and where. And there was a blank space labeled Full Legal Name.
There was the form on a clipboard, and there was a black, ball-point pen tied to it by a thin white string. She took the pen, clicked it, and then wrote my name for the very first time, right in the space awaiting it.
“Hah! ” she thought.
In the hours between my arrival and the form’s, my mother computed my entire life. She consulted tables of ephemeris; she interpolated the positions of the moon and the sun and the planets, and she calculated the angles between them, right down to the second. She carefully drew little symbols on concentric circles and the lines between them in different colors. She set every detail, and then she pondered, “what does it all mean?” When she figured it out, she was ready for that space labeled Full Legal Name.
“Based on this chart, this tiny thing’s going to become a high school geometry teacher one day. And when that day comes, they’ll call him Mister Thorne. So, that shall be his name.”
She completed the form. She entered my full legal name as Mister Michael Thorne, which made perfect sense, because the tradition in my family is that relatives call each other by middle name, rather than first. The family would call me Michael, and that would please my father . . . .
Apparently not! They say he was closer to furious the night he learned my full legal name.
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The summer before I started school, my father arranged to have my name removed. He didn’t want a grade school teacher asking little kids odd questions like, “is Mister Thorne here?” So he took me to the courthouse. He completed another form, and in the space labeled Full Legal Name, he got rid of Mister; I became Michael.
That night, he told his wife what he’d done, and they say it didn’t go over very well at all. There was a big fuss, and then she wouldn’t speak to my father for days. She wouldn’t fix his coffee in the morning, or his dinner at night; she wouldn’t iron his shirts and who knows what else. That was her boy and that was his name, she figured, and my father had absolutely no business with it. She told her two sisters, “So far as I'm concerned, he can go pregnant for nine months. He can have his own child, and he can name it whatever pleases him. That would be fine by me.”
Everyone else called me Michael except three women who knew so much about me and my fate. When one of them introduced me to someone else, she’d say, “I’d like you to meet Mister Thorne.”
As they saw it, my father accomplished nothing at the courthouse. “The boy’s going to become a high school geometry teacher, no matter what you call him. It’s all set. He’ll grow up, he’ll teach geometry, and everyone will call him Mister Thorne, whether you like it or not. Just you wait and see.”
Well, I never did become a high school geometry teacher. I taught mathematics at a university for a while, but I can’t say it had anything to do with a moon in Taurus, or a grand trine, or any other type of celestial event.
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I last saw her the evening of her last birthday. She was dying because all the cells in one part of her breast — a breast that wasn’t even there any more — were exploding like mad, so much so that they’d taken to exploding in some other part of her body that couldn’t tolerate so many tiny explosions. Her doctor told me that her prospects were measured in days. She was feeling a lot of pain, and they were giving her morphine to ease her.
I entered her room with a bouquet of flowers and she was quickly pleased by the sight. She wasn’t done under by the morphine just then; she was just so tired of all those tiny explosions using up all her energy and enthusiasm. She winked, and then she eyed the flowers and said how colorful they were. I set them on the nightstand.
We chatted about this and that for a while, and it occurred to me that we were avoiding something we always discussed — any sort of plan for the future (even one as petty as going grocery shopping tomorrow) —and then I told her, “I’ve got a real good surprise for you. Ready?”
“OK. Ready.”
“Here, take a look at this,” I said, opening my wallet.
The weak smile that the flowers formed on her eyes and her lips began to fade. I handed her my brand new driver’s license and social security card, and she looked at me with this old expression — the one that said “I suspect you’ve done something incredibly stupid.”
She took the IDs and examined them. In a moment, when she realized I’d changed my name back to the one she gave me, when that notion took its form in her mind, she started laughing. And she couldn’t stop. A nurse looked in to see what was happening, but that just provoked more laughter, which attracted several more nurses, which generated more laughter. But it didn’t last long. After a few minutes, she was exhausted. Then the twin brother of Thanatos came and took her away. One nurse adjusted her covers; the others went back to whatever they were doing before the commotion; I went my way.
That was it. My best friend for so many years and so many . . . how should I say? . . . situations and such . . . . She died before the next day could begin.
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Postscript: after reading this story, many decide they should address me as Mister. They shouldn’t.
In all my life, only three people addressed me by my first name, and they’re all gone.
Since I was 17 (more than just a few years ago), people have addressed me by my last name. And that’s fine by me. Call me Thorne.