Earlier this week, I was talking to a guy I’ve known through work for a few years. “Does Jacqueline still work for you?” I asked. “No, Jackie parted ways with our company almost a year ago,” he replied. That simple interaction immediately made me remember a story from my past, and I guess it was obvious because cocked his head a little and asked, “What?” So I told him.
When I was in college, I worked with the incoming freshmen and transfer students in small groups as a member of the Orientation Staff. Even though I had a couple hundred advisees over the course of one particular summer, I tended to recognize most of them when I saw them around campus during the next two academic years. After I graduated and remained working on campus for a while, I still ran into them when they were then juniors or seniors. One afternoon, I went to the little cafe just a one-minute walk from my building and went up to the counter. I immediately recognized the young lady in front of me as a former advisee and so I greeted her warmly. “Wow, you remember me?” she asked. I asked how everything had been going, and at one point, I slyly glanced over to her nametag to help me out. “Jacqueline,” it told me in block letters. At the end of our conversation, I said, “Take care, Jackie. Great seeing you.” I’d intentionally chosen the nickname to show familiarity and prove that I’d indeed remembered her.
Over the next several months, I went to that cafe between one and four times a week and saw her there a good percentage of the time. “Hi Jackie,” I’d say. “The usual?” she’d ask, and I’d nod. (The usual for lunch was a turkey burger with cheddar cheese, pickles, and ketchup. I loved that turkey burger, and I’m seriously salivating just thinking about it. I don’t think it’s worth the hour and a half drive it would take me to have it for lunch, but it was might tasty.)
One day, I was asked to do an academic presentation for the new crop of Orientation Staff, which was a cool “back where it all started” event for me. Before I got started, I looked out at the soon-to-be student advisors while they settled in after a snack break. Near the front was a familiar face smiling broadly at me. “Oh hey, Jackie,” I said, smiling back. I was actually pretty proud to see a former advisee now filling my old shoes, but I was distracted by other staff members’ looks of surprise or even shock. “It’s ok,” Jackie told them. “What’s ok?” I asked. “You’re the only person who calls me Jackie,” she said, “I told them when we met that I wanted to be called Jacqueline, but it’s cool that you call me that.” “Oh,” I said pretty sheepishly, “You don’t like ‘Jackie?'” “It’s ok, but my last name is Robinson, so…” I nodded, as if to say, “Of course it is.”
So there you go. My attempt to prove my familiarity with someone in turn made it clear that I didn’t really know her at all. You smell that, folks? That’s the rare but provocative scent of irony. And it goes great with turkey burgers.