Do not try this at home, boys and girls — even if you are one of the Twitterati!
Late yesterday afternoon, I Tweeted out the above picture with this message:
I’m giving blood at the Red Cross with my right, and Tweeting with my left!
Once again, I was giving double red cells, on account of this region needing it so badly. I can’t do it again until 16 weeks from now. But you can fill the need in the meantime.
But again, don’t try it at home. Go down to the Red Cross office on Bull Street (or attend one of the Red Cross blood drives). Click here for info on how to give.
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You might want to get your neck checked out, looks like it’s a little stiff.
Why are you wearing Donald’s name tag?
@Brad,
I can no longer sit back and allow communist infiltration, communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Uh, Jack… Are you sure about this, old boy?…
Donald is my first name. Unless you, too, go by your middle name, you have no idea how hard it is to get folks who don’t know you to use it…
So you want us to start calling you Donald?
I’m going to go ahead and register “donaldwarthen.com” for a new blog…
I feel your pain.
The tyrany of standardized name formats has made life even more difficult for those using their middle name or a double name that wasn’t cutsied up into a single name. Of course it’s still a good way to identify people you don’t know at all right away instead of wasting time trying to place them. You know, the ones who greet you with a diminutive of the name you never use.
Shouldn’t it be “the Donald.” modestly using the lower case “the” of course.
I think that’s taken. I’d have to be “another Donald.”
And Kathleen has the right of it. You can always tell who is pretending to be buddy-buddy with Robert Ariail. They call him “Bob,” or “Bobby.”
All right, I default to “the Brad.”
Being that you’re in SC, Donald will not do… “donny” it is.
In the South, I find that people are willing to address you as you wish to be addressed or, more likely, by your actual given name. I never have to argue with southerners that I prefer to be called Kathryn.
My husband goes by a nickname, “Steve,” and no one up North ever called him Stephen–actually one gay friend did prefer Stephen*, but many do down here.
Since many Southerners go by their middle names or some version of “junior” or “the third” (Bubba, Chip, Tripp, Trey), do you find that folks down here are more likely to call you “Brad,” “Donald” or “Bradley” than folks from away?
*There was a story about protesters at some gay gathering holding up signs “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” to which some gay man rolled his eyes and said, “That’s Stephen, please!”
@ Steven– Most people down here who go by Donny, say, are actually named “Donny.” My parents were surprised to find plenty of my classmates with given names like “Bobby” and “Cindy”…
How does “Jr.” turn into Chip or Tripp?
Bubba Warthen???
Tripp is “the Third” usually, also Trey. Jr. might be a “Chip off the old block” but I’m just guessing about that one.
and Bubba derives from Brother, I think.
If I have to switch to using the first name that I hate in order to donate blood, then I will refuse to donate blood or give any money to the American Red Cross. Do they actually force you to do this? I go by my middle name and I have done this ever since the day that I was born. My last name is also not pronounced the way that it is spelled and this is more than enough confusion for a name. In addition to this, my first name is too long to use with my long last name and the last letter of the first name and the middle initial do not always fit into the computer. There is absolutely no way that I will be forced to use a legally required alias in order to donate blood because this is a ridiculous insult. Why don’t they make people who go by their first name go by T. John Doe when they donate blood? If this is stupid, then be stupid towards everyone. If you aren’t going to be stupid and insulting towards everyone, then don’t be stupid towards anyone at all. People who go by their middle names should be complaining about this rude bullshit all over the USA.
Kathryn Fenner It isn’t true that people in the south will call everyone what they want to be called. I live in Atlanta, GA and it has been a major pain in the rear end to get people to call me Elaine when I have filled out legal documents and showed people my drivers license. I have had idiot teachers argue with me about this in high school. One teacher kept calling me the wrong name for about six weeks and another one did it for the entire school year. One college professor treated me like I was too stupid to know which name I preferred to use in front of a class of about thirty people. Another college professors would never make a note about this and they would never stop calling me the wrong name. Some teachers will also give you dirty looks when you correct them because the teachers are mean. I also applied for a county government job twice in the 1980s and I always gave them written and verbal clues that I went by the middle name. The idiotic guy still called me the wrong name and I corrected him about it in a very polite manner. He responded by talking like he wanted to slap me in the face and then he refused to hire me for the job for the second time. Job applications that I have filled out during my lifetime have never had a preferred given name spot on them except for one of them. I put Elaine in it and the guy still called me by the wrong name and I politely corrected him. Then he refused to hire me for the job. Another time during the 1980s, I was renting a car and the idiot called me by the wrong name and I politely corrected him. I asked him if he put my middle name in the computer and he said that both given names were in the computer. When I returned the car later on, I leaned over the counter and looked at the computer. My middle name was not in the computer at all and this means that the idiot lied to me. I was in another store during the 1990s and the clerk asked me something really rude when I told him that I go by the middle name instead of the first name and that I have been doing this since the day that I was born. He asked me if the reason why my parents did this to me was because of the possibility that they did not want me. I have been registered to vote with my first initial, middle name and last name since the late 1980s and nobody bothered me about this until 2008. Then idiots at the voting precinct starting harassing me about my name being different on my drivers license than the form I filled out at the voting precinct during the primary and also on election day. I was voting with the first initial, middle name and last name and the drivers license has my first name, middle name and last name on it. My first name starts with the letter that I put down as my first initial and my middle name and last name were the same on both documents. I also signed both documents with the first initial, middle name and last name. I also look like the person in the picture on my drivers license because that is my picture. The idiots started making negative comments about the way that my parents named me at the time of my birth. then they started trying to look me up in the voter registration computer database but they couldn’t find me because they were looking for my first name, middle initial and last name even though I told them that I was registered under my first initial, middle name and last name. Then they had to get their supervisor to come and help them out. I told her to look up my first initial, middle name and last name in the computer. She did this and found me in less than one minute. In the meantime, these stupid idiots were causing me to have a very long delay and the line behind me was getting backed up because of the stupid idiots who could not do their jobs and who were harassing me about my name. Every single time that I had to go vote these stupid idiots would make it extremely unpleasant to vote because I had to deal with this stupidity. Every single time that they would harass me about my name, their supervisor would have to do their job for them. It got so obnoxious and unpleasant that I did not even want to vote anymore. Here are some more problems that I have had in trying to get people to call me by my middle name. Idiots put the first initial after the middle name where it does not belong and then they refuse to correct the mistake after I have told them about it. Other idiots have become stupid by putting the first initial on my records twice. They put it in front of the middle name where it belongs and then they also put the first initial after the middle name where it does not belong. I refuse to allow idiots to lie about me having two middle names when I only have one. I do not like it when people refuse to correct this type of mistake after I have told them about it. I also don’t like it when the computer printout has my name listed as my first initial and last name and the middle name has been completely deleted. I do not use nicknames that are derived from either given name and I don’t want to be called by them. I don’t know why on earth you think that people in the south are willing to call people by their middle names because people have been awful to me about this for my entire life.