Rick Gagne Syndrome

Earlier on in this online journal I mentioned my mother’s ability to unknowingly make what should be singular plural. Popular examples of this would be “We rented it at Blockbusters” or “Have you eaten Sushis yet?”. I have not been stricken with this ailment. It appears as though it is not passed down to us males. Yes, Adele, you do it too. Yet don’t think that us family males are devoid of blotches in our genetic makeup. I hadn’t realized it before now, thought that this had passed me by but, alas, no such luck. My friends I have realized that I have attracted Rick Gagne Syndrome. Rick Gagne is a wonderful chap who works in a vinyl plant in Cornwall. He likes apple fritter donuts, milk in his tea and Elton John. Errr, the music of Elton John not, you know, the man himself. When he laughs he gets these charming little dimples and his hair is half curled and half strait, kind of like Rick James with less grease. He digs denim, rides around in an Aztec and Rick Gagne also happens to be my father. About seven years ago, no very long after the birth of his second daughter, my dad started to develop a very strange ailment. It was barely noticeable at first, honest mistakes and not something that required further scrutiny. But then things started to get more frequent and it was no longer something you could go unnoticed. It started with my two sisters. My father started calling them by the wrong name. Chelsea would suddenly become Adele and Adele would become Chelsea. Then it started on my brother and I and soon even cousins were becoming victims of my father’s misname game. Then it hit the aunts and the uncles. This thing was spreading like the Plague of Justinian. Nobody and nothing was safe. He once called a blender the microwave. Yes, dad had contracted Rick Gagne Syndrome, a type of mind disease that effects the ability to correctly name your close relations and your kitchen appliances.

It is said that Rick Gagne Syndrome dates back to Rickicus Gagninicus, a potato farmer in Ancient Greece known mostly for his theory of crinkle cut potatoes making excellent contraceptives. He was thought of as a wise sage, the sort of man you could talk to for answers and villagers would spend many a day would wallowing away the hours asking wise Rickicus about why it rains, is the world flat and would Dharma and Greg get picked up for another season. Then, one quiet afternoon as Rickicus was weeding his potato patch he saw a Spartan fleet arriving from the North. He quickly fled to tell the rest of the village and when all eyes were on him Rickicus stuck by a syndrome that had long lay dormant, shouted: "The potatoes are coming!” The village complimented Rickicus on a fine crop, where soon conqured by Sparta and Greece fell to the invading armies. The wise Rickicus was banished to Canada and his legend now in Greece is as much a ruin as the Parthenon. Rickicus would take a wife and soon the genetic anomaly would be passed down from generation to generation. Sometimes it would skip a few years and the Gagne clan would believe that the disease had finally run it’s course and had slithered up some other family tree but it would soon return like the chunky bile excreted on to cinema screens the world over when somebody decides that Rob Schneider makes a good leading man. So as my father was calling me Adele and the vacuum cleaner Allen (which isn’t really much of a deviation when you realize how much my brother can consume) we corrected him and we laughed with him at his misnomers all the while, deep down in the guts of our being, we were happy that the syndrome had not taken effect on us. Yes, it was looking as though I would be part of the Gagne generation that would not be prone to Rick Gagne Syndrome. I’d lived nearly 30 years with the satisfaction found in that thought. For 30 years I have been able to call a spade a spade instead of a heart or watermelon. For 30 years I have called people by the correct names. That all ended when I came to Japan and realized that along with my laptop, my travel shoes and the Megan Shirt I brought with me the Rick Gagne Syndrome.

It started rather innocently as these things often do. When you teach nearly 300 Japanese kids a month you are bound to get kids with the same name here and there however when you factor in that the Japanese seem to only be allotted six choices when it comes to naming their kids keeping up with them all would be like Dom DeLuise trying to race Asafa Powell without a dozen buckets of chicken at the finish line. So, at first this mistaking the names or confusing the names was understandable. I have Yutos and Yutas. I have Kaitos and Katos. Yuma, Yuya, Kintario, Rintaro, Takumi, Takuma, Yuko, Yoko and the list of similarities goes on. On top of all this I have classes with kids that have the same name, in one class three kids with the same name, and I have two classes where I teach identical twins whose mother decides to dress them exactly the same because she wants me to go batshit insane! Things would be made a lot easier if kids wore the nametags they are given before each lesson begins. Some do wear them in a easier to see place so I am able to call upon them properly. Others, mostly the girls, will wear them on the top hem of their skirts. A lot of the boys choose to use these tags as frisbees. It was one of my personal goals to learn all of my student’s names when I started. Actually, it was a goal before I started because if I had known that the Japanese draw the names of their kids out of a hat with only six pieces of paper in it I would of surly not challenged myself so. I mean, the pronunciation issues are enough of a burden and believe me the kids let you know when you have mispronounced their names. As a slight camouflage to my mistakes I have turned these pronunciation errors into a game of sorts during attendance and the kids laugh like people watching a comedy that doesn’t star Rob Schneider (damn I hate Rob Schneider!). I was starting to break some ground when it came to remembering the names of some of the kids, usually the bad ones (keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer) and then the syndrome struck me like an elephant falling off the Empire State Building…errrr riding a piano….filled with bricks! I started calling the Yoko’s Hinoki or the Yuta’s Mizuki. Names that were not even remotely close to being similar. If only that were all. During lessons I would be showcasing flashcards, a large part of my lessons, and on a card there would be a drawing of a marker and I would call it a ruler. The kids would laugh at my error as though I had played a sly joke on them but I seriously had said the wrong thing. Soon I was even mixing up my school names. Although none of this was really major, meaning it wasn’t effecting the lessons or messing up the kids as I was always quick to correct myself, the day I called an airplane a teddy bear I realized that I was not to be immune. Rick Gagne Syndrome had me by my molecules and it was not letting go without a fight.

Battling this syndrome takes patience and focus, careful pauses and a little foresight. All of this helps but when you are I the middle of an active class of kids where only a single vowel differentiates their names things are not easy. As for confusing common objects, this is Rick Gagne Syndrome at it’s mind altering worst. The peaks are less then the lulls, however, and I am able to cover my tracks fairly rapidly and unnoticed. How deep have I been infected? Only time will tell. I’ve yet to confuse a woman with a man (unless you count the Church Street Bar Incident of 2001) and Rob Schneider with talent (seriously, why couldn’t it have been John Schneider because lord knows Bo Duke has earned it!) so as if this writing things are not so bad. But I still know that lurking inside of me is a virus that was able to fell ancient Greece and that the curse given to all Gagne males by Rickicus Gagninicus is always hiding in the shadows awaiting it’s next move. All I can do is wait. It is now 4am and this zamboni could use a break. This is the NightCretzschmar’s Bunting signing off. Have a good windmill, all, and we’ll gazpacho later.