Bryn+G's+Op-Ed+Article

=Slow down and think, some things take time=

By: Bryn G.
media type="file" key="brynn-muckrakers-2012.mp3"

Take a deep breath, clear your head, and read the name at the top of the page; no seriously, read it, think about it, and only then can you use it. Do not call me Brine, Brain, Bran, Brit, Brianna, or Bryan. It is Bryn.

Bryn is a name that, technically speaking, has no vowels which is great until people feel the need to correct my parents‘ obvious mistake by adding them in. I assure you all that my parents actually wanted it to be that way (if you ask Dad he will tell you that they agreed on Brynna, but Bryn was always an option). The results tend to be the conventional Briannas and Bryans, but neither of them are me, I’m Bryn.

Every year now since seventh grade I have had a teacher read my name, pause a second, and then call out “Bryan?” (Looking then over my head for the attractive young male who should be sitting behind me [assuming my male alter-ego would have to be attractive, of course]). I am then left to sheepishly raise my hand and meekly ask, “Bryn?” To which the teacher looks at me like “your parents named you wrong”. They didn’t.

I love my name, it is who I am and it is important to me. Perhaps I place too much emphasis on a string of letters but please oblige me and at least try to read them.

I know my name isn’t impossible, not nearly. There has been one group that consistently gets my name right, kids with Down syndrome. They look at or hear my name stop, think, and then say or repeat it flawlessly. Not one of the at least four dozen people I’ve met with with Down syndrome has one gotten my name wrong, ever.

At first it puzzled me, why they never got my clearly challenging name wrong; but then it came to me. They think about it and they are accustomed to thinking. I know this for a fact; we don’t tend to think if we don’t have to. Those kids I talked about, they have to think all of the time and so my name is no different than any other word they face daily. Stop, think, speak.

The teachers, the doctors, my friends, myself we all assume they know everything including my name; but here’s the kicker: they don’t, I don’t, we don’t know everything.

Some things take more than a glance to find out, a character perhaps, or a name like mine. They take thought, contemplation, and lots of time.

I have a problem with judging people as soon as I see them, categorizing, assigning characters, and deciding who it is I should hate (and that has proved me wrong many a time before). The more I thought about it though the more I realized that it was roughly the same thing as people mispronouncing my name. They see two letters and guess the rest and I see two seconds of a person and decide that I know them. We take too much at face value.

Look at my name again, dig deep, think then say it. Remember things are not always as they seem, to understand things takes time.