Belong

Most of us spend a great deal of time looking for our place in the world.  This starts pretty young and often times lasts quite nearly forever.  If you’re lucky, your family provides this feeling of acceptance but ironically when you’re growing up they are the last people you want to get it from.  Growing up Greek-Life-Large in Whiter-Than-White-Bread Etobicoke was tough.  Fine, fine - not Crips vs Bloods tough but tough enough for mild, suburban Toronto.  We were the strange Greek family with the impossibly long name who spoke really loud but were never fighting in a language no one understood.  My brother and I could never understand why we never had lunches of  Kraft Dinner, but instead a strange concoction of scrambled eggs & french fries  We were so hard done by.

It’s really unnecessary to dig deep into these feelings of odd man out.  Look no further than the monstrosity of this name of mine:  Olga Constantopoulos.  Really?  4 + 15 = 19 letters of torture.  Spelling it, pronouncing it, spelling it again.  Only now can I be somewhat positive and thank it for my above average spelling skills and mildy annoying over-enunciation tendencies.

How in the world do Greek parents name their child Olga?  How does anyone name their child Olga?  How can you allow your child to make their way in the world by conjuring images of husky weight lifters from the Eastern Bloc, so mean, so stern? Sadly, we do have much in common:  grunting during any forms of physical activity; frizzy hair and disproportionate sized-thighs (one set filled with muscles, the other, Menchie’s) – there is nothing like projection.  Aside from all that, it’s just odd and nowhere was this more felt, by me anyway, than those kitschy touristy kiosks where everything you every thought you wanted has your name on it.  Well, not MY name.  YOURS for sure.   I’d wander and turn the stile hoping that after a Norman and before an Olivia would be me – an Olga to take home for my own.  Never if ever. 

I stopped looking ages ago. Who needs that stuff anyway! I’ll order my own personalized everything, thank you very much!  And I do, way too much! But you know, sometimes you just wander and you find yourself in front of a turnstile and you think, ah, what the hell, let’s feel like an outcast again.  Until, one day, you find this:

Is it more perfect that it’s Harry?  Of course it is.  Is it silly and childish that as soon as I saw it I ran over to my brother and he said “Olga, that’s so cool I’m buying it for you.”  Of course not.  He understands. 

Your family always does.