Where everybody knows your name

Names have power.
I firmly believe this.

We're encouraged to wear name tags at work.
Yeah.
Mine is at my desk.

You have members of the community that you really don't want to know your name speaking to you with a familiarity reserved for decade-old friends and family.
Sir.
Excuse me.
You DO NOT know me.
Step.

Or the time a gentleman asked me my name while I was working on the floor, and I told him.
No, I most certainly didn't want to.
Then the asshat went to the front desk and threw my name out like I referred him for the job posted.
Oh, I was so displeased.

I'll answer to Ma'am.  Miss.  Crystal.  Chrys.  Various other names from family and offspring.  Mimi to grandson.
But there is an intimacy in a name.  Your identity and experience are tied all up in there.

I'm often asked why I kept "Inman" as my last name after the divorce.  Quite simply, all my children have that last name.  And I wanted to keep THAT tie even though I severed the one with their father. So I'm building my professional career on a name that I married into and divorced out of.

That is what's important to me.  And it's a name that my children can now be proud of having.

Grins*

My children are too nice

Who would have thought that this would be a problem?
Not me when I was teaching them "please" "thank you" and "excuse me." Not me when I was teaching them to show respect for other people's feelings.
But guess what?
All these attributes that I tried so hard to instill in my children are being thrown back in their faces by asschildren. Malicious, manipulative asschildren.
Now. Before everyone gets up in arms about my terminology, I will qualify it by stating that asschildren aren't born. They're made. By negligent and selfish parents. These children LITERALLY don't know any better since they're were raised by horrible excuses for human beings who should never have procreated.
What in the HELL is wrong with kids today? Where the good kids are verbally abused by the liars and users? Where half the time I don't want to send my kids to school for fear of subjecting them to something that I can't fix?
What...in the blue fuck???
Children are precious. Whether they are two, twenty-two, or fifty-two. Their spirits so easily crushed by neglect, harsh words, or apathy. And that child who doesn't get enough attention will leech it off of someone else and suck them dry.
I don't want to UNDO my beautiful children. I love them as they are. But who would have thought I needed to send them to high school in battle armor? Or try and teach them to be a bit more selfish with their time since they're the only ones who will be?
This parenting job? Not so fucking easy. Overworked. Underpaid. Stressed out. Embattled on occasion.
But the perks? Beautiful, strong children who know their own worth.
I'll take the scars.
*******