Use my name, don't call me names

By CECILIA TUCKER

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 19, 2000

I hate to be called names by anyone. The name-calling really bothers me when the people doing it are the people I love and the people who say they love me. I have never been allowed to call the people I love names, so why do others have the right to do this to me?

I am not called words that most people would consider "bad," but they still hurt me. Maybe you think I am being overly sensitive, but I am just expressing to you how I feel. Let me tell you what others say to me that breaks my spirit and hurts me to the point of no return.

When I am told that I am lazy and unmotivated, I just want to scream. I want to say, "I'll show you how lazy and unmotivated I can be." I find myself doing destructive things just to prove that I am what you say about me. This only adds more negative words to the way my family sees me and how they address me. At times, because I hear others using these negative words to describe me, I use those same descriptions to give myself an excuse to screw up.

If I am looking for a way to not perform, I have it. Why do people call me names and then still expect me to do well? It makes me want to be lazy and unmotivated. I am not saying these words have caused me to be a screw-up; I am saying they don't help me make the changes I need to feel better about myself and succeed. I get to the point of saying to myself, "Why try? Just give it up."

How would you feel if people called you stupid and told you that you had no common sense? You would feel pretty stupid, and so do I when that happens! Telling some that they have no common sense implies that they can't even do brainless things correctly.

I feel pretty inadequate a lot of times on my own. I don't need anyone else's words of discouragement. At school this past year, when I walked into chorus and they moved me as far away from the microphone as they could, I got the message. When I went into the art room and I was given the cleanup job instead of pen and paper, what do you think that says to me? No one called me a name, but the implication is pretty obvious, even to someone who is lazy, unmotivated and stupid and has no common sense.

I think about people who are referred to as math nerds or techies or fantasy actors or actresses. I wonder if they feel they are labeled, too. Are they worried about how people refer to them? Would they rather just be called their name instead of being labeled?

Maybe I am being overly sensitive, but I like it better when you call me by my real name and not refer to me as someone who is different or deficient in some way. My name is important to me. It has no negative connotation to me. We've all been taught not to name-call or label others. Please respect me enough to treat me the way you want me to treat you.

-- IT! (Private thoughts of the Indomitable Teen) is written by Cecilia Tucker, a licensed marriage and family therapist at the Counseling Center for New Direction in Seminole. Tucker, who has been in counseling practice since 1979, writes this column under the guidance of a panel of teenage advisers, who approve the topics and offer their insights (in exchange for pizza). You may write her c/o: IT!, X-Press, the Times, P.O. Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731, or e-mail Floridian@sptimes.com.

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