You know when you meet someone named Michael and they say, “Call me Mike” or when an Elizabeth always goes by Liz? I wish it were that easy to shorten my name. Not that my name is super long or anything, but I like nicknames and familiarity and informality. I even like it when people (the select few who remember the good old days) call me Sheesh. But shortening my name has never been something that everyone does easily. In high school a couple people called me Sych. But it hasn’t really stuck anywhere else.
Until now. One of the actors in Sunlight spent about a week calling me Sych on accident (and can you blame her?), but it was infrequent and there was usually no one else around, and I didn’t correct her. (This, by the way, is the same actor who misheard Liz the stage manager’s name as Olivia, saved it in her cell phone like that, and still sometimes calls her that.) Finally one day she said, “I’ve been saying your name wrong,” and I told her I would still answer to it. Then the other actors started doing it too, and finally one day in rehearsal the director asked if they could shorten my name that was. I said yes, that I didn’t mind being called Sych but I wouldn’t want to, say, be introduced to a new person that way. And now they all do it.
And it’s just getting weird. I don’t know if it’s just from the overload which I’ve never experienced before, or if it’s TOO familiar for a group of people that I don’t necessarily feel like I’m BFFs with, but I now hear myself referred to as Sych about 15 times a day. I’m not sure if it’s something I’ll get used to or something I should nix in the future. So I’d just like to say, once again, thanks Mom and Dad for the swell name!
The Cameraphone Diaries 