Sometimes I have to ask myself, "What the hell is my name?" No, I don't forget it, it isn't that hard to remember. My birth certificate and my driver's license say it pretty clearly, "Jonathan David Esten." The issue is, how am I known?
As a kid, I was very firm that my name was JONATHAN. Don't call me Jon, because what you're thinking is John, and that's a toilet! Isn't kid logic great? Then, my family moved to North Carolina when I was eleven, one of the many unstable ages in the growing up process of a young boy. I was shy, awkward, and rather scared to be back in the States, so I wasn't going to argue with anybody. Some people who just like to shorten names as much as they can started calling me Jon, and I didn't correct them. You know these people, right? Christopher is automatically Chris, Elizabeth is automatically Liz, even short names like Kelly get chopped down to Kel. In retrospect, at least I didn't become Jack, because later on in puberty that would have been REALLY embarrassing...
By high school I was comfortable enough with Jon to not have a preference between it and Jonathan. My high school friends (and enemies, I suppose) knew me by whatever name I was first called in their presence. Then, along came high school football. Even though we had an uncharacteristically small squad while I was at Athens Drive High School, the standard sports-team practice of calling people by their last name was in effect for the coaches. So, for the season I was Esten. Football was really good for me and to me, as it provided an outlet for all that early-teen angst that I had been bottling up like crazy. Because I liked football so much, I started to like being called Esten just as well.
That's how I ended up with three names. I went away to the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics for my junior and senior years in high school, and took all three names with me. Jon caught on with a group of people that ended up being the core of my S&M friends (it's great to go to a school where the abbreviated form of the school name is S&M...), including a very serious and long-term girlfriend. She visited my home a lot and my parents and sister began to pick up on calling me Jon too.
Then comes college, the last... dear god, four years. I was thrust into being Esten full-time by my freshman hall. Oddly, there were four Jonathans on the hall, including both my roommate and me! Last names were the essential moniker for that hall, and anybody who called my room had to specify "Esten." There are many people here who don't even know that Esten isn't my first name.
I'm not always too sure how to introduce myself. Around school, I use Esten because that's what everybody knows. When I meet people elsewhere, in clubs or bookstores or on the internet, the quandary presents itself. "What the hell is my name?" I think I'm becoming a little kid again, or at least identifying with that little kid's name preference. I don't really feel like a Jon anymore. I think that's because I've grown so much since those last two years of high school when that was predominantly who I was. Esten has been my name for four years, and it is a good name. It's pretty unique, it's in all my e-mail addresses, and I've had a lot of good times as Esten. But... I don't know. Sometimes I feel like it lacks intimacy. I'm starting to introduce myself as Jonathan more and Esten less. Well, when I meet people I don't really want to see again, I'll introduce myself as Jon just to get them out of my life in a few less syllables, but otherwise, I'm Esten. Or Jonathan. Jonathan Esten. Jonathan D. Esten.
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Hit B in the crotch, just for fun.
