The Importance of Being Accurate

A few weeks ago we got a crop of new employees at work. I’m always sceptical of new people (clearly I have trust issues), but I figured that it’s also about time our office stopped feeling half empty. Even if they weren’t that great as employees or friends they would at least bring food to the regular lunchtime potlucks - and I’m always in favour of more food. So I decided to play nice. Make sure to remember their names, include them in conversations, and with-hold my bitchy-ness. And that worked out just fine - I was actually starting to think that they were nice - until one of them made a confession. 

He asked me one day whether I stood at a bus-stop on Albert Street every morning at around 8:15am. I confessed that indeed, I did. And then he told me that he and his girlfriend had been seeing me standing there every morning at the same time for long enough to give me a nickname: Aviators, because I wear big sunglasses. 

Now, I don’t like nicknames at the best of times. There are only two people in this world who are allowed to give me unwarranted nicknames without complaint - my mother (because I can’t stop her) and my BFF (also because I can’t stop her). Some of you may even remember what happened the last time that someone gave me an unapproved nickname; I didn’t speak to her for three days, until she apologized and promised to stop. 

But this nickname has to be the worst nickname ever. Besides the fact that I wear sunglasses for two very specific reasons (avoiding eye contact with the weirdo who tries to chat me up most days, and avoiding going sun blind thank-you-very-much), the sunglasses in question are #FashionNerdAlert NOT AVIATORS. They are in fact, just regular, big lensed, sunglasses of the non-aviator persuasion. Great for keeping the sun out of my eyes, but not great for impersonating Tom Cruise in Top Gun. In fact, a little internet research has deduced that this type of sunglasses is simply called “over-size,” because the lenses are much bigger than the eye to the point of providing excess coverage. 

And really, isn’t it the point of a nickname to accentuate something that is obvious? I would have tolerated being called “Sunglasses,” because I do wear them almost every day, but continuing to call me “Aviators” really just accentuates the fact that the nickname-r can’t get his (and her) facts right. 

After all: “Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.”