Screwed in advance
Just a note, this blog isn't about Runescape.
Okay, now this was something that seriously bothered me yesterday. To anyone who may not know, I'm a librarian. Now usually I don't work with the public, but yesterday I was working the downstairs front desk for most of the day. Anyway one of the jobs you do down there is you have a number of items being held on reserve for people to come pick them up. DVDs, books, videos, typical fare. Anyway, a young girl came around to pick up a book she had on reserve. She was probably somewhere between 13-14 years old if I had to guess. So I asked for the name it was under.I will keep her last name a secret as it's no one's business really, but it was her first name that caught my attention.
Her name was Euthanasia.
Now let that sink in beacause it needs to be thought about. Euthanasia, spelled that way, letter for letter.
Now look, I understand that some black people, even though they haven't had a relative see Africa in over 400 years, know nothing about it, know nothing of it's culture, know nothing of the people who live there, and maybe a 1/3 to 1/2 of them come from an ancestor who came from an island in the Carribbean anyway, wish to express some form of their African heritage. I don't get how giving your kids stupid names accomplishes this.
But as dumb as it is on its own, I don't think you understand the ramifications this will have on them in the future. Not the near future, I'm talking more than two decades after you give birth to them. Long after you appear on Maury to find out which of the two cousins in her father. Long after she's having trouble in school and you don't help her because you're more worried about going to da club at 30 years old. Long after she's in high school, and friends with other girls named Campho-Phenique and Shaquaqua and having trouble, but you can't help her because you didn't finish high school. Long after you gave her a ridiculous name. She's going to have to look for a job.
Now if she does well enough to have a job where she sends in a resume, what kind of first impression do you think this name will make? Let's say some employer gets three resumes for a job. One from Mary, one from Susan, and one from Euthanasia. What kind of first impression do you think that will make? How much harder is she going to have to work to get the job because you named her after the word that is defined as "mercy killing?" It's utter crap.
Frankly, the only place Euthanasia should have in all this is that we perform it on the dumb mother who named her daughter that. Killed for the mercy and the future of her child.
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